Did the RAI buy it? The role and limits of American broadcasting in Italy in the Cold War

Abstract

With a 20 million dollar budget and 1,900 staff, Voice of America broadcast in 45 different languages and Italy was one of its main targets. By looking into what went on behind the microphone, this article addresses the extent to which cultural change was planned and structured transnationally, the interactions and interdependencies operating between Washington and Rome, and how cooperation was achieved despite the fierce resistance of some of Radio Audizioni Italia's (RAI) executives. This allowed programmes produced in New York to air, and led to the launch of the most popular character of Italian radio and television: Mike Bongiorno.

Notes

Dr. Simona Tobia is a Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations and she teaches European History at the University of Reading. Her research interests focus on the history of war and conflict in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on its cultural aspects. She authored the monograph Advertising America. The United States Information Service in Italy, 1945-1956, Milano: LED, 2008. As a result of her work for the AHRC project ‘Languages at War’ she co-authored with Hilary Footitt the monograph WarTalk: Foreign Languages and the British War Effort, 1940-1946, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013, and she published on cultural aspects of the Second World War. Currently, she is working on an edited book on Interrogation in War and Conflict with Christopher Andrew. Correspondence to: [email protected]

77 Tobia, Advertising America (2008) and Tobia ‘Advertising America: VOA and Italy’ (2011). The RAI archives are not entirely accessible, therefore this article is based on documents about the Italian broadcaster found at NARA and WAC.

76 Simona Tobia ed. Cold War History Special Issue ‘Europe Americanized?’, 11, no. 1 (2011).

75 For a discussion on the differences between the two different models of broadcasting (American and European), see Ellwood, The shock of America, 420.

74 H-Diplo Article Review Roundtable, 13, no. 4 (2011), http://www.h-net.org/ ∼ diplo/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-XIII-4.pdf.

73 Ellwood, The shock of America, 401.

72 Umberto Eco, ‘Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno’, Rivista Pirelli, 1961, and Umberto Eco, Diario Minimo (Milano: Mondadori, 1963).

71 Bongiorno and Bongiorno, La versione di Mike,102.

70 Bongiorno and Bongiorno, La versione di Mike, 98–102.

69 Mike Bongiorno and Nicola Bongiorno, La versione di Mike (Milano: Mondadori, 2007), 82.

68 NARA, RG 306, Entry 69, VOA Program Schedule 1950–1953, Box 1, March-April 1950.

67 BBC WAC, E2/578, 9 March 1951.

66 BBC WAC, E2/578, 9 March 1951.

65 BBC WAC, E1/1014, 28 May 1952

64 BBC WAC, E1/1014, 28 May 1952.

63 BBC WAC, E1/1014, 19 May 1952.

62 BBC WAC, E1/1014, 15 April 1952.

61 NARA, Northeast Region, RG 306, Box 116 13 052 A, 1953.

60 BBC Written Archives Caversham (hereafter WAC), E1/1008/1, 1949.

59 Ellwood, The shock of America, 421.

58 Tobia, Advertising America, 36.

57 NARA, RG 306, Entry 1032 Box 5, Operations Advisory Report on USIS Italy, 16 November 1956, pp. 19–20.

56 NARA, RG 84, Entry 2783 A, Box 8, USIS Broadcasting in Italy, 26 January 1954.

55 These programmes were the above-mentioned Ai vostri ordini and Radio University, but also a Press Review, and Vita musicale in America, Voci e volti d'America, Radioritmi, and News Feature Spots which were included in the RAI programme Voci dal mondo. The Press Review was produced to be used by the RAI within its news programmes. At the moment, the scripts of these programmes are not available at the NARA Northeast Region, nor are the materials that the USIS prepared that were to be used by the RAI.

54 NARA, RG 84, Entry 2783 A, Box 8, USIS Broadcasting in Italy, 26 January 1954.

53 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, IBS: VOA Production for Italian Radio (RAI), 22 June 1953.

52 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, IBS: VOA Production for Italian Radio (RAI), 22 June 1953.

51 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, Production for Italian Service, 14 March 1952.

50 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, IBS: VOA Shortwave to Italy, 26 June 1952; NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, Proposed Reduction in Italian Service, VOA, 20 May 1953.

49 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, 511.65/5-1353, Box 2467, 1954–1955 IIA Prospectus for Italy 13 May 1953, p. 16.

48 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, USIA IBS/NY Shortwave Versus Production for RAI, 7 August 1953.

47 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, Foreign Service Despatch – USIA IBS/NY Shortwave Versus Production for RAI, 7 August 1953.

46 Simona Tobia, ‘Advertising America: VOA and Italy’, Cold War History, 11, no. 1 (2011): 39–40.

45 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, Foreign Service Despatch – Production for Italian Service, 14 March 1952.

44 NARA, RG 59 Lot/Office Files, Entry 1559 Box 195, Semi-Annual Report International Radio Program Division, January 1952, p. 134.

43 NARA, RG 59 Lot/Office Files, Entry 1559 Box 195, Semi-Annual Report International Radio Program Division, January 1952, p. 134.

42 NARA, RG 59 Lot/Office Files, Entry 1559 Box 195, Semi-Annual Report International Radio Program Division, January 1952, p. 164.

41 NARA, RG 59 Lot/Office Files, Entry 1559 Box 195, Semi-Annual Report International Radio Program Division, January 1952, pp. 33–35.

40 Matthew Evangelista, ‘Transnational organizations in the Cold War’, 400–401.

39 On Italian radio, in fact, besides the programmes produced with VOA and with the USIS and those of VOA, from 1948 there were also programmes from ECA, the body that administered the Marshall Plan aid payments, which were aired for one hour and 15 minutes per week. NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, Foreign Service Despatch – VOA's Radio University Programs, 29 March 1950, p. 3.

38 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, 511.65 4 Box 2470, OII/IBD Department Instruction no. 64, 28 February 1950, p. 6.

37 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, 511.65 4 Box 2470, OII/IBD Department Instruction n° 64, 28February 1950, p. 1.

36 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, 511.65 4 Box 2470, OII/IBD Department Instruction no. 64, 28 February 1950, pp. 2–5.

35 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, Class 511.65 4 Box 2470, VOA's Radio University Programs, 29 March 1950.

34 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, 511.65 4 Box 2470, OII/IBD Department Instruction no. 64, 28 February 1950, p. 2.

33 Franco Monteleone, Storia della RAI dagli alleati alla DC, 1944–1954 (Roma: Laterza, 1980) 161.

32 Radiocorriere, 7 (15 February 1948).

31 Radiocorriere, 1, (December 23, 1945).

30 David Forgacs, Italian culture in the industrial era (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 5.

29 Tobia, Advertising America, 223–244.

28 In fiscal year 1953: 628,000 US dollars USIS; 3,500,000 MSA. Fiscal year 1954: 656,000 USIS; 1,000,000 MSA.

27 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, 511.65/5-1353, Box 2467, IIA Prospectus, 13May 1953.

26 NARA, RG 306, Entry 1008, Box 1, Analysis of the ‘Voice’ Broadcasts to Russia, Poland, Germany and Italy, November 1950, p. 39.

25 NARA, RG 306, Entry 1008, Box 1, Analysis of the ‘Voice’ Broadcasts to Russia, Poland, Germany and Italy, November 1950, p. 3.

24 NARA, RG 306, Entry 1008, Box 1, Analysis of the ‘Voice’ Broadcasts to Russia, Poland, Germany and Italy, November 1950, pp. 1–2.

23 NARA, RG 59 Lot/Office Files, Entry 1392 Box 2, Target and Media Priorities; Present Status of Programs and Major Needs, 7 April 1950.

22 NARA, RG 59 Lot/Office Files, Entry 1559, Box 195, The United States Plan for International Broadcasting, 1950, p. 3.

21 Walter Roberts, former Associate Director of USIA, interview with the author, November 2006.

20 Carlo Alberto Pizzini ‘Radio all'ombra dei grattacieli’, Radiocorriere, 5 February 1950.

19 This article is not concerned with the description and interpretation of the texts produced by VOA (which has already been done elsewhere: Tobia, Advertising America, 194–217), but in the dynamics of their production and placement on the Italian network.

18 NARA, RG 59 Central Decimal File, 511.65/2 – 852, Box 2466.

17 Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs (1945–1948); Office of International Information (1948–1950); Office of International Information and Cultural Exchange Programs (1950–1952) and International Information Administration (1952–1953).

16 Clavin, ‘Defining Transnationalism’, 423.

15 Clavin P., ‘Defining Transnationalism’ in Contemporary European History, 14, no. 4 (2005), 421–439, 422; Thelen, ‘The Nation and Beyond’, 966–967.

14 D. Thelen, ‘The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History’ in The Journal of American History, 86, no. 3 (1999), 965–975, 967.

13 See for example Matthew Evangelista, ‘Transnational organizations in the Cold War’, in The Cambridge history of the Cold War, vol. III, eds. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambrdige: CUP, 2010), 400–590.

12 Jessica Gienow-Hecht, ‘Cultural Transfer’ in Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, eds. Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 257–278.

11 Nehring, ‘Westernization’, 177.

10 Nehring, ‘Westernization’, 176.

9 Tobia, Advertising America, 223–245.

8 Simona Tobia, Advertising America. The United States Information Service in Italy 1945–1956 (Milano: LED, 2008), 223–285; Giles Scott-Smith, Networks of empire. The US State Department's foreign leader program in the Netherlands, France and Britain 1950–70 (Brusells: PIE Peter Lang, 2008).

7 Berghan, “The debate on ‘Americanization’”, 111. See also Frances Stonor Saunders, The cultural Cold War: the CIA and the world of arts and letters (New York: The New Press, 1999) and Giles Scott-Smith, The cultural Cold War in Western Europe 1945–1960 (London: Frank Cass, 2003).

6 R.W. Pirsein, The Voice of America. An history of the international broadcasting activities of the United States government 1940–1962 (New York: Arno Press, 1979); Alan L. Heil, Voice of America. A history (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Holly Cowan Shulman, The Voice of America. Propaganda and democracy, 1941–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990); David F. Krugler, The Voice of America and the domestic propaganda battle, 1945–1953 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Nicholas J. Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008).

5 David Ellwood, The shock of America: Europe and the challenge of the century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

4 Emanuela Scarpellini, Shopping American style: the arrival of the supermarket in postwar Italy (Oxford: OUP, 2004); Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire. America's advance through 20^th-century Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005); Pier Paolo D'Attorre, Nemici per la pelle: sogno Americano e mito sovietico nell'Italia contemporanea (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1991); Stephen Gundle, ‘L'americanizzazione del quotidiano: televisione e consumismo nell'Italia degli anni cinquanta’, Quaderni storici 61, no. 2 (1986) 561–94; Between Hollywood and Moscow: the Italian communists and the challenge of mass culture, 1943–1991 (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2000); David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007); Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York: Harper Collins, 1997).

3 Volker R. Berghan, ‘The debate on “Americanization” among economic and cultural historians’, Cold War History 10, no. 1 (2010), 109; Holger Nehring, ‘“Westernization”: A new paradigm for interpreting West European history in a Cold War context’, Cold War History 4, no. 2 (2004), 177.

2 Rob Kroes, If you've seen one you've seen the Mall (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), x–xi.

1 Nicholas J. Cull, ‘“Public diplomacy” before Gullion: the evolution of a phrase’, Public Diplomacy Newsletter, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, 18 April 2006.