The Rai half-year does not seem to end in style: today the journalists of the Rai mastheads and networks are on strike to protest against the lack of a plan on information from the Public Service and for the lack of involvement in the choices made by the top management regarding the cut night editions of TgR and Rai Sport.
The game, however, is much more complex and is not limited to trade union claims alone invests the entire perimeter of Rai problems that they will have to face in its near future. At stake are first of all advertising resources which could become increasingly scarce (see also the recent Legislative Decree 288 approved following the provisions of Brussels to adapt the new TUSMAR), then the ratings which are in progressive and inexorable reduction in the entire television audience ( the president Marinella Soldi spoke of about 2 million less than last year) and, finally, in the regulatory framework that is about to be changed both as regards the eight governance reform proposals currently under discussion in Parliament, and as regards the renewal of the Service Contract expiring next year. All this in the context of the completion of the transition to DVB-T2 which will have to be started right next year.
To understand the meaning of this initiative by journalists I will use it first of all, it is necessary to take a step back and go back at least to July 2018, when the previous Board of Directors of Viale Mazzini was established, chaired by Marcello Foa and CEO Fabrizio Salini. A few months after their arrival at the top of the company, the Business plan 2018-21 with its 5 supporting materials, one of which was the "Rai information plan - Annex 4". The two documents constituted (and in part still are) an organic proposal for the renewal and evolution of Rai towards the so-called "media company" model where the "information" area played a decisive factor in allowing Rai to remain competitive on an increasingly restricted market attacked by the presence of new operators/platforms, in continuous technological evolution and an increasingly fluid and changing public in consumption and behaviour. Is the industrial plan that the one on information did not have great luck: the first (as we have also already written on FIRSTonline) was above all as ambitious as little supported by adequate resources to support it and, moreover, it then had to deal with the arrival of the pandemic which forced the board to suspend him in February last year. Subsequently, with the arrival of Carlo Fuortes as CEO, it was partially revived with the adoption of a new organizational model.
Instead, the information plan had a completely different fate, which not only never saw the light of day but was never even the subject of reflection and debate. A similar fate was experienced by the so-called "Verdelli plan" (from the name of the journalist called in 2016 by the former General Manager Antonio Campo Dall'Orto and appointed Director of the Information Offer) who, as soon as he realized the difficulties in putting his hand in an organic and coordinated with the entire perimeter of information Rai abandoned the field and with him all the good intentions of the "newsroom" and "media company" came to an end. Verdelli's plan it envisaged: 1) the reduction of the editions of the news (as, moreover, envisaged by the Service Contract still in force); 2) the precise definition of the editorial mission of the Tg; 3) the creation of an “Italia Newsroom” to bring together the current RaiNews24 and part of the regional information; 4) the launch of the new “Rai24” website.
To close the circle it is appropriate to recall one supervisory motion of November 2019 where Rai is "invited" to "specify the times and methods for integrating RaiNews24, TGR, Rainews.it and Televideo into a single multi-platform channel operating in a single Newsroom". All dead letter ended up in oblivion.
And it is precisely in these terms that we arrive at the heart of today's comparison where it is understood exactly the total lack of an organic project and innovative aspect of all the information offered by the public service which starts from the television and radio mastheads and ends up on the Web (just yesterday the editorial and graphic restyling of the site was launched Rainews.it)
The cornerstone of this unprecedented season for the new course of the CEO was recently placed in a hearing before the Supervisory Commission when Fuortes surprisingly announced that starting from the first days of January he would cut the midnight edition of the TgR (duration 4,5 minutes with a cost of around 5 million and an average listen from a telephone area code). Open up heaven: a chorus of protests from those who believed that this initiative was going to touch delicate balances in regional information and as well as jobs.
The clash focused in terms of cost/yield per audience and was limited, for now, only to the mentioned editions of TgR and Rai Sport while nothing was touched on everything else. Attention: by "everything else" we mean not only the publications but also the new reorganization by "genres" where the theme "information" or "in-depth analysis" whose management was recently entrusted to Mario Orfeo, former director of Tg1 and DG Rai, who will now have to jump through hoops to clearly clarify his role and responsibilities compared to what the newspapers can/should do.
But what does it consist of? the universe of the various Tg, Gr, RaiNews24, Rai Sport etc and how much do the journalists who work there “weigh”? From the data in our possession it appears that in the eight titles the numbers are divided as follows:
Tg1: 144 journalists of which 29 managers
Tg2: 139 journalists of which 27 managers
Tg3: 118 journalists of which 30 managers
TgR: 766 journalists of which 52 managers
Gr Radio: 229 journalists of which 42 executives
Rai News: 230 journalists of which 40 executives
Rai Parliament: 42 journalists of which 11 executives
Rai Sport: 116 journalists of which 23 managers
For a total of 1.784 journalists of which 254 executives. The average cost in 2019 was around 143.000 euros per capita (source Rai) while the final balance of the "Rai world" for the News in 2018 (latest available data) was around 320 million (excluding Rai Sport and Gr).
Let's read an assessment by Francesco Siliato - Studio Frasi on data processed in terms of "information genre" according to the Nielsen classification in the period October-December 2021 on the total "individuals". The three Rai networks have an average audience approximately 1.072.000 (share 10,4%, 4300 episodes and duration 109.000 minutes) compared to Mediaset which, in the same period had 1.091.377 audience (share 8,56%, 2.691 episodes and duration 56.242 minutes) .
Finally, it is worth remembering that Rai is the only Public Service in Europe where three newscasts are broadcast compared to one in Great Britain and France and two in Germany.
Conclusion: Rai journalists could have good reasons to claim that it is need a comprehensive project of reorganization of all the information offered by the Public Service and that putting one piece at a time (however insignificant) can have little meaning and little impact on the accounts of the Company which instead remains the focus of the problems. Likewise, a matter of this kind should not be the result of actions that are not the result of a vast debate and the involvement of all the social and cultural subjects directly involved, which are not just journalists. For the new Rai top management, the new year presents itself as "quite problematic and let's say an understatement..." as one of our qualified sources in Viale Mazzini summarized, not to mention that the political framework close to entering a phase of high fibrillation could make the problems mentioned even more relevant.
