italian tv for children

...is abysmal. The kids themselves love it of course, but only because kids are so easily satisfied, and the networks know this. But to those of us from England or the States who are used to better things, kids television here appears to be a diet of almost solid cartoons - A continual sludge of mediocrity for the brain-dead or dying child.

All the big anime favourites are screened here - Card Captor Sakura, and Sailor Moon for instance, which are not too bad, but there's also the ubiquitous Pokemon and a lot of other really cheaply made mindless, badly drawn anime rubbish with weird mystic Japanese storylines springing from a culture and domestic morality that is completely alien to Europe. All the shows are dubbed into Italian and some of the characters use quite strong language - I'm not talking about adult anime, I'm talking about daytime TV, and the afternoon schedules that five to ten year-olds watch when they come home from school.
One would think that the strong language would be 'edited' out at the language-dubbing stage, but clearly the ItalianTV companies who buy in this stodge from Japan think that it doesn't matter, and we are shocked that the dubbers simply replace Japanese strong language with Italian strong language in cartoon shows that four-year-olds watch. On another matter of censorship for children, they screen the American production of the Hercules serial here at about 5pm. This, one would have thought is a show for the older, teenage child, in the manner of Xena Warrior Princess (which is also screened at the same time) and should go out much later than 5pm. We have no great objection to the classical fantasy behind this series, children should be allowed a good measure of dragons, fairies, monsters and heroes, but this modern Hercules is portrayed more as a modern-day martial arts LA street-thug, and there is less magic than violent hand-to-hand combat in this programme. One episode showed Hercules slugging it out with an adversary and both men picked up heavy rocks to weight their punches more, an ugly trick that I wouldn't wish to see my six year old or his peers experimenting with in the playground.
There is no serious children's drama here, like Grange Hill or the period dramas the BBC make for children, but only cartoons. Accordingly, there's no real-life role models or scenarios played by human actors that kids can relate to, respect, or judge objectively. Neither are there any magazine-style programmes like Blue Peter - Instead, it's just wall-to-wall totally animated fantasy rubbish.

We suggest you limit your children's viewing-time of this crud, and also encourage them to read books, because without that they're not gonna get any preparation for the real world from this animated bubblegum at all.

Another indication of the cheapness of Italian TV station output is that each cartoon show begins and ends with a long, drawn out extended edit of the title music and credits of the show, often lasting as long as two minutes. Obviously the stations are hard put to find material to fill their transmissions with, and pad out the spaces between commercials for toys and candy as much as possible. The signature tunes of the shows are also re-recorded in Italian and seem to be all sung by the same woman, (a dame by the name of Cristina d'Avena) who's obviously making a good living cooing and hiccuping her way through the title theme of nearly every cartoon show on the networks in the same noxiously cutie-cutie manner, no matter what the show is. There's only one sound in the world more aggravating than a precocious Italian child's voice, and that's an singing Italian adult trying to sound like one.

In England and the States, we generally prefer to get shot of our kids by 8pm at the latest. However, the culture in Italy is different - Children are included in most adult family activities barring actual screwing, which means they're always up late, and therefore kids TV on these channels continues up until 9pm or later! It's therefore pointless trying to get little Marco to go to bed at seven o'clock as little Marco knows that all his friends, with official sanction from the TV companies will be up till nine-fifteen watching 'YattaMan' or some other such rubbish. In reality, most children are up even later than that.
If a family invites you to their house for dinner, your evening is likely to be marred by ever-present background shrieks and tantrums as children who should rightfully have been in bed hours ago continue to fight for control over TV, videos and Nintendo till after midnight. In fact, just last night, an Italian child of some house-guests of ours screamed so loudly that my left ear is still hurting. They simply have no manners, and the hour upon hour of rubbish TV they watch is, in my opinion, largely to blame, for this type of programming encourages children to imagine they are living in some fantasy magic world where grown-ups either don't exist, or have no significance worth respecting. Such is the essence of such pulp as Dragonball, Rosanna, Sailor Moon, card captor Sakura and Knghts of the Zodiac. Indeed, Dragonball, with its subtext of youth drug-gang culture and so-called 'honour', encourages the idea that violence, continual conflict and hand-to-hand combat is the natural state of childhood and universal society in general.

William Golding's book and film 'Lord of the Flies' shocked readers and audiences when it debuted in the 1950s. It was intended only as food for thought for mature, thinking audiences. Yet fifty years later, its basic plot of children becoming war-like savages when left alone to govern themselves is now the foundational premise of almost every single children's cartoon on Italian TV. This cannot be a good thing. Some of the worst examples of this mind-corrupting and innocence-stripping pulp childrens tv programming are broadcast on Italian prime minister Berlusconi's own TV networks. Not enough that the nation's most powerful politician uses his own TV channels to control propaganda, he is also feeding the next generation of Italians with this crud. It is hard to imagine a more disgusting state of political, cultural and consumer state of affairs. But, that's Italy folks...

The other problem with this culture is that in reality, kids TV doesn't strictly stop at nine o'clock - Network shows up until eleven or midnight often retain a distinctly infantile flavour - Romebuddy has not yet determined if this is due to the high numbers of Italian children who are still not in bed, or cultural immaturity of Italian adults. For example, there's a primetime show called Rex The Policedog, which goes out at nine o'clock, often in double episodes lasting until 11 o'clock. Rex is a German Shepherd, and indeed the programme seems to be a German production, but I don't believe the Germans show this kind of show after nine pm - it's a kid's show, with the thinnest plots imaginable - Lassie with a bulletproof vest - Y'know, lots of doggie tricks. But Italians clearly get off on this kind of simplicity. This inappropriate scheduling works both ways; starting from the late afternoons on Italian TV, when children are watching, there are commercials for tampons, condoms and womens underwear, often of a highly suggestive nature. In fact most Italian advertising is sexually provocative, yet it goes out sandwiched between children's or apparantly childish adult programmes with a profusion that evidences nothing but sheer disregard by the TV networks or censors for the impressionability of a child's mind. Romebuddy is currently in dialogue with the TV stations here over their children's programme scheduling policies. Italians never complain about anything, but if they don't, we will.

In Rome, and we suppose it's the same in most Italian cities there are two or three main stations dedicated almost totally to children's programming.
The main kids TV station in Rome is called Super 3, and is presided over by a woman called Sonia, who probably works harder than anyone else in Italy - She's on the air conducting phone-ins from kids between the shows from morning till night. She also wins our award for the woman with the most irritating voice in the world. She must have been a schoolteacher in a previous life until she discovered the existence of money. She appears to run the station almost single-handedly, and the station's recent acquisition of an advertising deal with McDonalds, involving TV ads featuring Sonia herself gojng to McDonalds burger joints and personally endorsing Happy Meals indicates that Super 3 is a growing concern - What a pity they don't plough back some of that fat advertising revenue from McDonalds into some decent quality programme production for the childhood viewers Sonia claims to love so much. But this of course is Italy, and no corporation in Italy ever ploughs profits back into the business with a view to improving customer service.

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