A perverse interweaving between politics, the Government and Rai with a common thread: the new Industrial Plan recently approved by the Viale Mazzini Board of Directors. In the previous article on this topic we wrote about the scheduled hearing in the Parliamentary Supervisory Commission, which was supposed to view the Plan itself and express an assessment. After the second postponement we are at a stalemate: all the political forces believe that the subject can wait for better times, perhaps the results of the next European electoral competition.
Why all this and why does it happen after having already been postponed by six months compared to what is expressly provided for in the Service Contract? The answer is formally simple: because for the forces of the majority of the Government, the League and the M5S, among the many tensions that divide them the one on Rai is of particular interest and delicacy.
A lot of "prudence" is all in the contents of the Business Plan, in its guidelines: the pillar, the most relevant element, of the Plan is the proposal to radically change the organizational structure of the Company of public service broadcasting. The current production plant for vertical networks and mastheads is revolutionary (on the roots of the by now ancient vision that emerged from the previous reforms) to bring it towards a horizontal structure, so-called "content centric" where nine new directions have been identified: Day Time Entertainment and Prime Time Entertainment, Cultural and Educational Content, Insights, Fiction, Cinema/TV Series, Documentaries, Kids and New Formats and Digital. All this coordinated and enhanced by a Marketing function.
In addition, this new model features a greater separation of responsibilities and specializations of roles compared to what is currently happening. The current network directors, for example, will have less editorial and budget autonomy, configuring themselves, in fact, as simple executors of indications that come from the competent directorates. How much, to what extent and with what scope for action the new directors will be able to act compared to the current ones still does not seem entirely clear, with possible risks of overlaps and duplications as, for example, recently feared the former undersecretary of the Tlc, Antonello Giacomelli. To these chapters we must add the others, no less relevant, connected to the Industrial Plan: the creation of new channels (English and institutional) together with a project for linguistic minorities and a curious note relating to a female channel (summary of Rai Premium and Rai Movie as stated on pages 9 and 11 of the Plan).
At this point politics and the usual hunger for jobs, seats and budgets to manage come into play. With this new business plan all cards are reshuffled, on the contrary, a new deck is used to open a new game and none of the players is willing to leave winning points to the opponent. Just to give an idea of how things could go, this morning, Wednesday 27 March, it should be submitted to the Board of Directors of Viale Mazzini a proposal for a new corporate organizational structure which should provide for the exhumation of the old figure of the General Manager that the law in force had canceled in favor of the new one hinged on the Chief Executive Officer (we are talking about Alberto Matassino). The logic of the Law was Renziana's "one man in command" which now, however, with a magical stroke, would be overturned in favor of "two men alone in command" who, although with distinct roles, they too, in fact should govern the Company and its possible change. And it is precisely on how, with what criteria, with what procedures the new directors should be appointed that the Plan could get stuck. There is no mention of transparency, of methods for selecting professional profiles and it could be, as far as it appears at the moment, a completely independent procedure from what is currently envisaged.
It is therefore a profound innovation which, if applied, could radically affect the nature and the very perception of the Service by users, by the citizens who pay the fee. On this front, two chapters of considerable importance open up: the resources on which to rely to apply the Plan (on Firstonline we wrote about the imbalance between what is required of Rai for what it must produce compared to the budget it has) and the fundamental function of support for social cohesion that the Public Service is called upon to perform. We will return to these topics.
