The ratings siren went off in Sanremo. And it is an anomalous sound, almost forgotten, because recent years have become accustomed to exorbitant, exceptional figures, in the true sense of the word.

That ‘6’ in front, on the share front, transcribed by Amadeus in 2023 and then replicated twelve and twenty-four months later had made what was instead an extraordinary phenomenon a practice. And when Carlo Conti took over the baton in 2025 without suffering any repercussions, indeed by further improving the data, it was thought that that well-being could last forever. Nothing could be more wrong.

If the 58% share is an ultra-satisfactory result and vastly superior to most editions of this millennium, what is alarming is the flight of heads, with the average viewership collapsing below the psychological threshold of 10 million. Excluding the Covid edition (which is irrelevant for a thousand and one reasons), it hasn’t happened since Baudo’s last time.

However, there are those who will smile at this decline, which in some ways resembles a collapse. That someone is the one who will succeed Conti. The Sanremo Festival, in fact, had recently turned into a hot potato that everyone skilfully avoided. And every hypothesis of revolution is only difficult to conceive in the face of a heavy legacy, which instinct pushes you to preserve without too many shocks and experiments.

We are only at the beginning and the 76th Festival still has a chance of recovery, although the departures always say a lot about the global trend. However, a ‘normalized’ Sanremo will make it easier to launch into alternative suggestions and evaluations, which at this point could even be desirable by the public.

Amadeus, in his five golden years, had eliminated any possibility of looking towards the future and, without the escape to the Nine, his stay at Ariston would hardly have been interrupted. Conti, in 2025, took advantage of the lucky streak, further increasing ratings. A miracle that didn’t succeed this time, proving how one can make a living on an income, but for a fixed period of time.

Rising from the rubble (this is not the case, for now) was the favorite sport of Paolo Bonolis, who signed the 2005 and 2009 editions, following the flops of Simona Ventura and the aforementioned Baudo. The fate of Giorgio Panariello was diametrically opposed, as he received the very heavy inheritance from Bonolis in 2006, facing merciless comparisons.

Here then is that a tarnished Conti, both in terms of content and Auditel, would favor the change of register. Without worries, without anxieties and without that mental block dictated by the motto “you can’t change a team that wins”.

In the meantime, we have to deal with the present and alibis are pouring in to justify the failure. “It’s the fault of the postponement to the end of February”, many complain. Forgetting that this exact period was the time window for dozens of festivals up until 2008, with events that even coincided with Women’s Day. Damn amnesia.