The Departure of Massimo Gramellini from Rai: Reasons, Reactions, and Future Plans

«Here, the music is over/The friends are leaving/What a pointless evening…». Franco Califano’s words would be needed to comment on the end of Le parole su Raitre; and to hide “the melancholy under the shadow of a smile” from his conductor Massimo Gramellini already melancholy of him-who would have purged himself from an evidently Nazi-fascist Rai.

Massimo, a big pen and a big heart, whose contract had expired, would have communicated his corporate farewell to arms to the Rai top management. To tell the truth, he had already carried on with his work in the last episode of his program last Saturday, greeting his audience and analyzing the very word “public”. «Public also means public service. Allow me to thank the much mistreated Rai», Max communicated «beyond and above the appetite for power to which it has been the subject since its birth, this company is full of workers, technicians, extraordinary managers». And he added: “A great Rai executive from the past told me that a public service does not consist in having all the stories of reality within the same programme, but rather the possibility of choosing several programs that tell reality in different ways”. Oh God, beyond the heartfelt Paul Auster tone, it’s not that I understood the meaning of the farewell.

THE EXEGESIS OF THE CALIPH

But if we applied the Caliph’s exegesis to Gramelli’s text, it could be read as: «You are too authoritarian and normalizers (as Romano Prodi says in La Stampa), and I too am leaving you after Fazio and the Annunziata». More or less, that’s the sense. Obviously, at the news of Gramlin’s abandonment, the CEO Roberto Sergio and the general manager Giampaolo Rossi were visibly displaced. Dressed in black shirt and fez, one very busy crossing the circle of fire placed on the desks on the seventh floor and the other ordering two tanks of castor oil in exchange for goods (just so as not to run out) together with the contract of service, the two Melonian hierarchs actually had the renewal of next season ready for Gramellini’s program. Sure, maybe Max should have called the guests “you”; and conduct the interviews dressed as Ugo Tognazzi in the Federale; and to accompany the piano with a delightful Fabio Rampelli playing the Trio Lescano. But I’m pinzillacchere. For the rest, ça va sans dire, maximum freedom of lineup.

However, in the new too fascist Rai there would be no room for a Savoyard liberal like the deputy director of Corriere della Sera. So here is the first reason for the choice of the alleged abandonment of him: «Each spectator, by paying the license fee, finances not only his own freedom of choice, but also that of others», he recalled. That is, as Lucia and Fabio warned, after having preferred voluntary exile to the reconfirmation of the contract: here it is not a question of written agreements, but of the “climate that has arisen”. Liberticidal stuff regardless, like «book & perfect fascist musket». In short, there would have been embarrassment in continuing to go on video in Rai because “nothing is shared about this government” (Annunziata dixit). Then there is also a second reason to leave the old ship and take the new route: a new contract.

MANY OFFERS

In fact, according to the well-informed Giuseppe Candela in Dagospia, it would seem that Gramellini is destined for La7 where Urbano Cairo, his multifaceted editor at Corriere della Sera, would hire him for Saturday evenings. Among other things, Nicola Porro, Fazio’s natural replacement, would remain “my family” at Mediaset, despite Rai’s half offer to even let him co-produce his own talk transferred to viale Mazzini.

For the rest confirmed Monica Maggioni and Antonio Di Bella, who if they are not bundles they are collaborators. So only the templar of Gramscism Corrado Augias would resist on state television back in the days of the EIAR; which is certainly macerated in a self-sacrificial obsession. And, caught in a Roman restaurant by Carmelo Caruso del Foglio, he seems to have declared with a hint of a clenched fist: “I’m not leaving Rai!”. All this despite Giorgia Meloni so blonde and so gloomy, well, for Augias, deep down, she looks a lot like the thunder-women photographed by Leni Riefenstahl. «My love/ I waited so long to see you/ But it didn’t help». The Caliph sang it, but it sounds like Gramellini in the deaf and gray antechamber of Roberto Sergio…