From Radio to Radio-visione: Italian Radio’s Television Experiments, 1939–1940

This article investigates a series of experimental television broadcasts undertaken by Italian Fascism’s national broadcasting entity, the Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche, in the years leading up to the Second World War. It explores both the official autarchical policies and the technological limitations that shaped the radio network’s early experiments with television to show that producers’ attitudes regarding medium specificity shaped decisions about programming and musical content. It then suggests that these early sorties into televisual broadcasting left traces that can be seen in the style and political clout of Italian television even today.