Abstract

This article focuses on the connections between the political system and Italian TV broadcasting during the Fifties. Compared with other western European countries, Italy had taken an unusual course; in fact, Parliament was kept outside and subordinate to the cabinet in the running and control of public broadcasting, while a strong judicial and managerial continuity linked it to fascist era legislation. Morover, at least until the centre-left formula, government monopoly over the media had meant an exclusive hold by the Christian Democrats. The article analyses this "power of management" on television wielded by the DC in the years of centrismo and the parliamentary and public debate on the problem of "governing television". It was, in particular, the socialist-communist left that tried to reform the television system by placing it under parliamentary rather than government control.