Maurizio Costanzo was the prototype of the generalist

Few on TV agree to speak to a few. Few consider the large slices of Auditel’s share occasional and welcome, to be celebrated but not indispensable. Few believe or have believed that TV is the continuation of politics and culture by other means, and that without respect for ideas and for their more or less complete elaboration, politics and culture disappear from the conversation on the screen, and with them the ethics of the trade, to leave room only for “other means”. Maurizio Costanzo was the prototype of the generalistwas a fierce public hunter, at any cost, and he had found it, he cultivated it fiercely, dedicating his life, passion, profits and the ironic cynicism of a medium that will become legendary and will sooner or later involve practically everyone, with very rare exceptions. The TV of pain, anti-mafia, sequins and brawling screamers was the immovable substrate of his television ambition, the ecclesiastical capture, repetitive like frequent mass, with no escape, a sort of 41-bis or opium of the people, of the average spectator, to whom an average discourse had to be addressed in order to obtain a good average listening.