Television genres, from "paleo-" to "neo-television"

The history of television as a “technology without content” developed through the institutionalism of its mains genres. Italian Television in particular is an excellent testimony of new languages usage to express the cultural and political ideas of the public service network (especially in its early decades of the Paleo-tv) and the predominant popular dimension, which became increasingly evident from the advent of Neo-tv. The essay looks at the period from the 1950s (with the advent of television) to the early 2000s, identifying each epoch through a specific genre and referring to specific programmes, distinguishing feature of that specific television era: every genre identifies a predominant trend but also a meaningful manifestation of its production period. Each of them, inserted in its specific context, is somehow emblematic of the idiosyncrasies of Italian television in terms of expressive choices, registers, adaptation and re-mediations, compared to the benchmark television models, European public service and American commercial tv.