Activities

Territori, archivi audiovisivi e cultura agroalimentare: ATLas at the seminar organised in Pollenzo

ATLas took part in the study day dedicated to agri-food culture, exploring the connections between territories and audiovisual archives, promoted by the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo on 15 May 2025, in collaboration with the National Archive of Industrial Cinema. In particular, the afternoon session featured a presentation by Luca Barra, principal investigator of the project, entitled L’archivio dell’emittenza tv locale di ATLas e alcune tracce di cultura del cibo. Risultati e problemi.

Local TV and journalism: seminar at the University of Cagliari

Scheduled on March 25, 2025 at the Aresu Campus of the University of Cagliari, the seminar Local Television and Journalism: History, Developments, Synergies will feature journalist Giacomo Serreli (Videolina) as a guest speaker. The event is part of the lecture series Multimedia Production and Publishing and will be coordinated by Diego Cavallotti.

Special Lecture – Television workshop (University of Bologna)

On March 20, 2025, a special lecture on the audience of local broadcasters will take place as part of the TV and Web TV Workshop: Contemporary Television, between Generalist Programming, Streaming and Active Multiscreen, offered within the Communication Sciences degree course at the University of Bologna. The session is led by Emiliano Rossi (workshop coordinator) together with Giulia Allegrini, an expert in audience development and engagement strategies.

Advertisement and private TV: seminar at EHESS (Paris)

On March 18, 2025 Giulia Crisanti and Damiano Garofalo presented a paper on the relationship between advertising and Italian private TV during the 1980s titled Going commercial: Italian Television in a Glocal World (1970s-1990s). Their contribution was part of the series of seminars dedicated to the study of influence practices organized by Le réseau d'étude des pratiques d'influence (Répine) at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

ATLas for the project “Piccoli formati, grandi memorie: il cinema e la scuola”

“Piccoli formati, grandi memorie” is a project by the Home Movies Foundation that involves primary, lower and upper secondary schools in a journey through time using home movies, archival cinema, and personal memories. The initiative is part of a 2023 devoted call promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education. ATLas is also included in the programme of initiatives aimed at teachers of participating classes: on February 20, 2025, Luca Barra and Emiliano Rossi held a seminar entitled Il progetto ATLas: verso un archivio delle tv locali in Italia.

Local TV and food entertainment: panel at the Che fai, mangi? conference

The researchers from ATLas participated in the Che fai, mangi? Cucina, gastronomia e storia della televisione in Italia conference, organized on February 19-20, 2025, by the University of Turin as part of the project “GOLA. Representation of gastronomic culture, nutrition, and food in the Italian media system. Stardom, material culture, taste (1954-1990)”. Three presentations related to the PRIN ATLas project focused on Videogruppo Piemonte, Antenna 3, and local Sardinian broadcasting.

The Politics of Italian Privatisations and the TV Industry: Conference at Università di Roma Tre

A conference on Italian privatisation processes in the international context is scheduled for 6-7 February, 2025 at Roma Tre University. Damiano Garofalo and Giulia Crisanti − members of ATLas research unit in Rome − presented a contribution on the privatisation of Italy’s television industry in the 1980s.

Ph.D. Workshop – University of Bari "Aldo Moro"

On January 30, 2025, the doctoral seminar Il riuso e la valorizzazione delle immagini negli archivi televisivi: il progetto ATLas, curated by Emiliano Rossi, was held at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro”.

The cases of Antenna 3 and TeleSanterno at the conference Il documentario televisivo in Italia

Tra palco e realtà. Tracce di documentari da Antenna 3 a TeleSanterno is the title of the paper presented by Emiliano Rossi and Matteo Marinello (University of Bologna) at the conference Il documentario televisivo in Italia. Spazi, forme, culture, held on January 29-30, 2025, at the University of Salento (Lecce).

Conference on Roma Capitale: the City of Rome in its local televisions

A conference dedicated to the history of Rome in the Republican era took place on January 29-30, 2025 at Rome University (La Sapienza). Giulia Crisanti presented a contribution on the topic The Image of Roma Capitale Through Its Local Televisions.

Le televisioni locali in Italia: seminar at Torino University

Scheduled on January 9-10, 2025 at the University of Torino, the workshop Le televisioni locali in Italia. Relazioni teoriche e metodologiche tra storia della tv, del cinema e dei media is organised by the local research unit of ATLas project. Among the speakers: Susanna Gianandrea (Rai Teche), Simona Casonato (Museo Nazionale di Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo Da Vinci), Gabriele Proglio (Università di Scienze Gastronomiche), Irene Piazzoni (Università degli Studi di Milano), Andrea Mariani (Università di Udine), Paolo Magaudda (Università di Padova); a presentation of issue no. 27 of «Imago. Studi di cinema e media» journal, which focuses on Raffaella Carrà, will also occur.

Calcio e città: territorio, identità, narrazioni 

With a contribution entitled «Pannella and Pallone»: Soccer, Politics and Local TV in Rome (1976-1990): the case of Teleroma56 Giulia Crisanti and Margherita Moro participated in the conference on Football and the City. Territory, Identity, Narratives held at the University of Bologna on October 15-16, 2024. The conference provided an opportunity to reflect - through the case study provided by TeleRoma56 - on how local TV stations operated as laboratories for the development of the linguistic codes, the expertise and the TV formats that contributed to making soccer a kind of TV genre and show that combines the commitment to news-making and entertainment.

Le televisioni locali in Italia: seminar at Cagliari University

Organised by the Sardinian unit of ATLas, the seminar Le televisioni locali in Italia: dall’archivio alle storie del territorio takes place on September 16 and 17, 2024 at the Cittadella dei Musei “Giovanni Lilliu” of the University of Cagliari. The programme includes two panels with guests and experts ("Storie dei media, storia orali, storie locali" and"L'archivio video: gestione, digitalizzazione e accesso"), with a closing roundtable.

ATLas at Studi Culturali in Italia conference

With a presentation entitled Culture produttive e filo diretto con il territorio. Due storie di emittenti televisive locali italiane, Emiliano Rossi (Bologna Unit) and Paola Zeni (Turin Unit) participate in the conference organised on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the journal “Studi Culturali” (Bologna, 12-13 September 2024). The panel “Journalism, Television and Radio” is chaired by Luca Barra, principal investigator of ATLas. The conference aims to map the state of cultural studies in Italy and explore its future prospects, promoting a collective conversation around the central themes of this interdisciplinary field of study.

ATLas at NECS Conference 2024

Scheduled on June 27, 2024 at the İzmir University of Economics (Turkey), the panel Local Televisions, Uncovered. Trajectories across the Emergence of Italian Private Channels was held by researchers of the ATLas project. In particular, Damiano Garofalo and Giulia Crisanti dealt with the issue of the alleged Americanisation which both affected and generated from non State-controlled TV enterprises (1984 and the Big Brother That You Did Not See Coming. Re-Interpreting the History of Italy’s Private Tv Networks in the 1980s), while Diego Cavallotti and Myriam Mereu concentrated on the journalistic coverage offered by Sardegna 1 to its regional audience (“On an Island in the Sun”. News-Making and Emerging Local Televisions in Sardinia: The Case of Sardegna 1). Finally, Luca Barra and Emiliano Rossi problematized the presence of softcore content in Antenna3 video-catalogues (“That’s What Audiences Expect from Us”: Softcore Content and Local TV).

Interviews to Fabio Caressa and Sandro Piccinini - Sapienza Università di Roma

On April 29, 2024, as part of the research on Teleroma 56, the working unit of Rome University (La Sapienza) interviewed sports journalist Fabio Caressa. Among the topics addressed, his early years and training at the Roman TV station, where he worked from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The same issues were addressed during another interview to sport TV host Sandro Piccinini (June 19, 2024).

Viewing workstation - Università di Torino

The Turin unit of the ATLas project – composed by prof. Riccardo Fassone and dott. Paola Zeni – installed at the Department of Humanistic Studies of the University of Turin a viewing workstation for the audiovisual material produced by Videogruppo Piemonte. The original programming, today partially preserved on U-matic supports, can thus be consulted within the unit, leading to a further step in the reconstruction of the broadcaster’s cultural and production history.

Drive in e la storia della televisione: special seminar (Sapienza Università di Roma)

A roundtable dedicated to Drive in and its connection with the history of Italian TV took place at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" on March 22, 2024. The event provided the opportunity to present the goals and preliminary outcomes of the ATLas - Atlas of Local Televisions project.

First panel speakers:
- Luca Barra (P.I. of the project at the University of Bologna) gave a speech on the history of local TV networks and the evolution of Italian comedy;
- Damiano Garofalo and Giulia Crisanti (who are part of the Rome unit of the PRIN) discussed the Americanization of Italian TV during the 1980s;
- Francesca Cantore and Silvia Campisano (researcher and PhD student, Sapienza Università di Roma) focused on the critical reception of Drive In during the years of its airing.

The second panel featured Antonio Ricci (author of Drive In), Barbara Palombelli (journalist and TV host), Victoria Cabello (TV host), and Enrico Mentana (journalist and director of TG La7). The roundtable was moderated by Andrea Minuz and Michele Masneri.

Le televisioni locali in Italia: metodi e prospettive storiografiche (Sapienza Università di Roma)

Scheduled on January 11-12, 2024, the workshop is organised by the Roman research unity of the project; the programme is composed of two panels: Il sistema dei media in Italia: prospettive di storia culturale, nuovi linguaggi pubblicitari e forme di americanizzazione and Raccontare un'Italia che cambia: geografie urbane, culture del consumo e possibili orizzonti di public history.

Televisivamente locali. Storie, economie, industrie: seminar at Bologna University

Scheduled on December 14, 2023 (Aula A, via Azzo Gardino 23), the seminar is organized by the local unit of the project, as part of the course in Cultures of Television Production. Papers by Peppino Ortoleva (Il surrealismo del consumo. Tv locali e società) and Flavia Barca (Le tv locali in Italia e le trasformazioni sociali ed economiche del Paese); speeches will be given also by the principal investigator of the project, Prof. Luca Barra,  along with the researchers involved in the research.

ATLas at Storia&Storie 2023

The yearly workshop of AIRSC, the Italian Association for Film History Research, was held in Bologna on December 11 at the Cineteca. Matteo Marinello and Emiliano Rossi took part in the "Fonti e archivi: realtà e orizzonti" panel, with a paper entitled “Come dei boscaioli a Manhattan”: verso un atlante dell’emittenza locale in Italia, focused on a contextualization of the cases of Antenna 3 and TeleSanterno.

Rethinking Broadcast Archives: presentation at FIAT/IFTA Conference

The ATLas working group has taken part in the conference Rethinking Broadcast Archives: Dig, Deconstruct, Display organized by the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) at the British Film Institute in London (December 8, 2023). With a speech prepared with Luca Barra and Diego Cavallotti, Emiliano Rossi presented the paper ATLas Chronicles. Designing an Italian Archive of Past Local Tv Channels, initiating a dialogue with other researchers involved in similar projects at an international level.

Local tv and social movements: conference at Sapienza Università di Roma

Organized on November 30, 2023 by the University of Rome La Sapienza in collaboration with CGIL/SPI, the conference I movimenti sociali nella trasformazione degli anni Ottanta was attended by several humanities researchers. On this occasion, Giulia Crisanti and Damiano Garofalo presented a paper entitled Le televisioni private tra locale e globale.

Metodologie e spazi della ricerca sui media: roundtable at Università Link

ATLas is among the partners of the conference Metodologie e spazi della ricerca sui media, organized by Link University (Rome) on November 21, 2023. As part of this collaboration, Luca Barra and Damiano Garofalo take part to the workshop Teoria e prassi dell’intervista tra production studies, scienze sociali e storia orale, focused on the most effective research methods applied to tv industries.

ATLas at NECS 2023 Conference

Scheduled on June 17, 2023 in Oslo as part of the annual NECS Conference, the workshop Archiving Television Histories: Main Challenges and Research Trajectories was attended, among others, by Luca Barra, Diego Cavallotti and Damiano Garofalo. The ATLas research group gave an account of the methodological framework of the ongoing project.

Conference Presentations: Storia sociale/Storia dei media

Some of the researchers working for ATLas project took part in Storia sociale/ Storia dei media. Fonti, metodologie, ricerche per la storia del cinema e della televisione in Italia conference, organised by Sapienza Università di Roma on May 11-12, 2023. Part of the panel “Televisioni locali”, Matteo Marinello and Emiliano Rossi proposed an initial overview of Antenna 3 source analysis (La battaglia di Legnano: Antenna 3 Lombardia tra radici locali e ambizioni nazionali). Diego Cavallotti (Università degli Studi di Cagliari) concentrated on the presence of cinema in the first programming of cinema in local broadcasting (“Nuovi spazi di visione: il film nelle televisioni locali italiane tra il 1976 e il 1979”) and introduced the main outlines of the research programme in the roundtable “Le audience negli studi di cinema e media in Italia”.

Ph.D. Workshop - Università di Bologna

Organized as part of the doctoral program in Visual, Performing and Media Arts, the Principal Investigator of the project, Luca Barra, held a doctoral workshop at the Department of the Arts (Università di Bologna) on March 23, 2023 (ATLas - Atlante delle Televisioni Locali. Questioni di metodo e prime traiettorie di ricerca).  Framing the main thematic lines, aims and operational tools of this study, the meeting also delved into the case of TeleSanterno, drawing from the field experience of the research team.

Interviews with Professionals - Bologna Working Group

On March 11, 2023, scholars from the Bologna unit had the opportunity to meet TeleSanterno's founder, Domenico Berti, with some members of his family and a large group of professionals active in the channel since the beginning of its broadcasts (1976). The interviews conducted in Casalfiumanese (Bologna) shed light on the channel's first operational phase, clarifying its editorial and commercial positioning, as well as the contribution of its various employees. This was also the occasion for collecting anecdotes and personal memories which, once properly codified, will constitute a significant source for the research outputs.

Field Research Launch - Bologna Working Group

The field research session of the Bologna working group was launched in December 2022. Thanks to the collaboration of Renzo Villa's family, researchers could proceed with an initial investigation of the rich documentary apparatus (line-ups, original photographs, industrial materials, correspondence, press reviews, accounts) on to the beginnings of Antenna Tre's broadcast in Lombardy. The work was followed by a visit to the broadcaster's archives and to its tape library (Legnano) where digitization of the whole prime-time programming since 1977 is in completion.

XXVIII International Conference on Film Studies

With a paper by Diego Cavallotti (Pirates at a slower pace: the illegal circulation of films between 1971 and 1976 in Italy), ATLas was present at the XXVIII International Conference on Film Studies, dedicated to the production practices of Italian cinema between 1949 and 1976. The initiative, organised by the University of Roma Tre, took place on November 28-29, 2022. 

Da Wanna Marchi a Wanna. Le tv locali, le televendite, lo scandalo

Organized on October 5, 2022 as part of the Television and Digital Media course (DAMS programme, Università di Bologna), the talk focused on the Netflix docu-series dedicated to Wanna Marchi, in order to reconstruct the local TV landscape of the 1980s and 1990s and the scandals surrounding Italy's most notorious tele-marketer. Participants included the head of non-fiction of Netflix Italy, the creator of the content and the producer (Fremantle Italy).

ATLas at NECS Conference 2022

Diego Cavallotti (Università degli Studi di Cagliari) took part in NECS 2022 Conference (Epistemic Media: Atlas, Archive, Network - Universitatea Politehnica din Bucureşti, Bucharest, June 23-26, 2022) with a presentation entitled The Silver Screen and the Living Room: Film Programming on Local Televisions in Italy Between 1971 and 1976. 

2022 AAIS Conference 

The launch of the project was scheduled as part of the annual conference of the American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS), held in Bologna from May 29 to June 1, 2022. The panel "How to Map the History of Italian Local Television Channels (1976-1990)" featured the participation of the research local responsibles, in dialogue with Valentina Re (Link Campus University, Rome).