If a restaurant only serves fish and suddenly changes the menu, starting to also cook meat, it takes time for customers to get used to it. And, above all, it takes time for potential customers to notice, because in the meantime they have always served themselves elsewhere. An example that would be enough to explain La 7’s difficult relationship with game shows, which came to light already two years ago, when Caterina Balivo ended up at the helm of “Lingo”, a program that had seen the light in 2021 on Rai 2 with Giancarlo Magalli (it was titled “One word too many”) and, looking even further back, at the beginning of the nineties on Canale 5.

And so, after a season’s break, here is a new experiment starring Flavio Insinna, who has been at the helm of “Famiglie d’Italia” since October. The outcome, at the moment, seems identical: 2% threshold for Balivo and even a little less for the former face of L’Eredità who, who knows, perhaps was thinking of moving some of his audience to Urbano Cairo’s network . But “Affari Tuoi” and Amadeus have taught that between format and host the former almost always survives.

The premise is necessary: ​​both “Lingo” and “Famiglie d’Italia” are not flagship products capable of generating particular suggestions and curiosities on their own. To this, however, a basic principle must be added, already exposed at the beginning: for twenty years La 7 has never offered that dish, dedicating itself exclusively to political talk shows, where the only example of entertainment is represented by “Propaganda Live” . To say. And to think that it was precisely with quizzes that La 7 inaugurated its programming in the summer of 2001. Games in succession, spread throughout the morning, with an additional nocturnal version that started at 1am and ended at 3am. They ranged from “Mango ” to “Puzzle Time”, from “Zengi” to “Si o No”, led by young presenters who, in some cases, would go on to make their way like Arianna Ciampoli, Jane Alexander and Edoardo Stoppa. Before “Lingo” and “Famiglie d’Italia”, the last game in chronological order was 100%, in 2002. It was a program with contestants in the studio to whom the questions were asked by a voice off screen, belonging to Gigio D’Ambrosio.

Then came the darkness, a profound transformation on the editorial level and the construction of an informative identity which meant that La 7, over the years, swallowed and immediately (or almost immediately) spat out any project that simply attempted to embark on a path alternative. From soaps like “Amare per semper” (proposed in the wake of the boom of “Il Segreto” and canceled after less than a month of airing) to “Miss Italia”, passing through the exclusive of Gigi D’Alessio’s concert for the land of fires in September 2015. Low attention, at times very low, from an audience that now expected something else from the broadcaster. Changing established fashions and trends requires time, which La 7 doesn’t seem to have, and restyling work on the target, which the channel has no intention of starting.

Flavio Insinna, out of Rai after thirty years, breaks the silence: his words