“The dream is there, but I haven’t done anything to make it come true.” This is how Alessandro Cattelan spoke about Sanremo. “I remain myself, with my circle of friends, my way of working, my style. If thanks to all this, or despite all this, I manage to lead it, fine. Otherwise I will still be happy.”

In short, it was a desire to join Ariston, never an obsession. But in the aftermath of Stefano De Martino’s coronation as the next host and artistic director, a reflection on the face of Tortona becomes inevitable.

Charismatic, objectively talented, unquestionably capable. However, Cattelan always missed the last step. A small apparent step, a huge leap in concrete terms, which would allow him to fill the only truly great gap: the collective perception of making television aimed at a few.

Antonella Clerici told him

Antonella Clerici told him and created a perfect definition for him, which remained imprinted like a tattoo: “You have to get dirty with sauce”. A few words that contained – and contain – the essence of generalist TV, the one that still enters the homes of the masses, the one that still knows how to generate the collective ritual. Translated: the one that ensures immediate follow-up.

Cattelan has always shrugged his shoulders, pretending not to give importance to the issue. From the series: if they like me ok, otherwise it doesn’t matter. An attitude that on the one hand allows you to keep your identity intact and not contaminate yourself, but on the other hand isolates you in a niche that is too often self-referential.

Predestined and helmsman of the Festival of the Future designated almost automatically, Cattelan’s figure has weakened over time. Until he remained completely out of the shortlist, with the consequent farewell to Rai.

The engagement in Rai, then the renunciation of “broad consumption”

A Rai that had hired him from Sky in 2021, entrusting him, ready to go, with the prime time of the flagship. With “Da grande”, however, he immediately gave the idea of ​​wanting to change the Rai1 audience and not of being the one to adapt to the context. Nothing could be more self-defeating.

He followed the lead of Eurovision, supported by Laura Pausini and Mika, and then returned to take refuge in the second evening with “Stasera c’è Cattelan”. Practically what he did on Sky. No more, no less.

Cattelan has thus given up on staining himself, preferring to be closed in on his own ideal world, never abandoning that snobbishness towards anything that was potentially for mass consumption.

De Martino, on the contrary, proved to be his exact opposite. Maybe less talented, but the perfect child of national popularism and predisposed to communicating to a wide audience. If Cattelan selects, De Martino welcomes everyone. His is a TV with arms wide open, inclusive.

Cattelan’s point of reference is Jimmy Fallon, American comedian and host of the “Tonight Show”. De Martino, on the other hand, is declared the son of Renzo Arbore and of a universe that Italians perceive as more similar, or at least closer and better known.

No one can say whether the Sanremo hypothesis is definitively archived for Cattelan. What is certain is that the choice that fell on De Martino represents, at least symbolically, the predilection of one way of being over another.