Usually, especially in our country, when we refer to a
generic world of entertainment, our mind associates everything with the
television dimension. In fact, in addition to cinema and numerous other media,
the small screen has contributed enormously in presenting us with the most
disparate public figures over the decades.
Likewise, companies have always seen television as an
excellent showcase for selling their products, through general-purpose
advertising designed to reach as wide an audience as possible.
With the increasing diffusion of the internet in the 2000s,
however, everything inevitably began to change, arriving, thanks also to the
emergence of social networks and platforms of extreme importance and
importance, such as Facebook, Youtube and Twitch, to a new type of
entertainment. Trying to dwell on what has happened in Italy in recent years,
how have two media that are so different but at the same time so similar
evolved in our country , especially in relation to the world of entertainment?
A long-underrated opponent
Although capable of attracting global interest right away,
YouTube has obviously undergone numerous changes from its origins to get to its
current form also, or perhaps above all, in relation to the creation of
content.
If we pauses only for a moment to reflect not only on the
evolution of the platform but also on the very approach with which many users
today approach it, it is undeniable that there has been a profound structural
change in the way of proposing oneself on the internet .
In fact, if in its early days the publication on YouTube was
intended more than anything else as an activity of sharing a fragment of one's
daily life without other purposes, in a short time the intrinsic potential of
the internet, that is to be able to freely publish various types of content, is
literally cannibalized by the idea of success, of creating formats and,
ultimately, of finding any way to entertain a large audience of people.
Today, many new potential users of the platformthey no
longer see the network as a tool designed for the free dissemination of content
, but more as a launching platform for something, a sort of showcase for
formats capable of generating huge profits.
More and more often we hear about ideas for making success
on the internet, about new trends to be launched to soar in a market that is
now saturated but still in continuous and constant expansion.
The growing interest of companies in content sharing
platforms, as well as the emergence of level creators who have gradually become
loyal to their fanbase over the years, has inevitably led platforms such as
YouTube, Instagram and Twitch to transform on a genetic level . giving birth to
a new form of entertainment.
In the last ten years the web has thus become a direct and
fierce competitor of generalist TV that, especially in the early years of the
mainstream consecration of social media (we are talking about 2010-2011), has
seen this new world as a real rival to be annihilated. by any means possible,
without the possibility of mediation.
In the last decade these two realities have hardly managed
to find a winning and stable understanding over time, in fact finding
themselves much more often in clear competition to grab the largest number of
investors and sponsors. There are few exceptions in this sense, designed to
find a healthy and intelligent meeting point, without forcing.
After this first phase of forced separation, various
management agencies have in any case decided to invest heavily in the new
talents of the web, aiming, if we want, to try to bring the two worlds closer
together, albeit without ever being able to make that leap in quality, even at
the level of of content, which a free media such as the internet could offer.
In essence, in the end, the whole world of the web turned
into a kind of TV 2., with many professional and non-professional creators,
capable of providing the public with quality entertainment by focusing more and
more on the concept of format but also on other contents that are not really so
exciting.
All of this, of courses, is part of the game of any
entertainment-related media . Unfortunately, however, the television world,
given the ever-growing power of social media, has tried to shut itself up in
its comfort zone as much as possible, without ever really opening up to the
new, at least until today. In fact, something is starting to change.
Is an agreement possible?
Also thanks to the explosion of the Twitch platform, which
occurred due to various factors including the purchase by the giant Amazon in
2014 , the great gap between the two worlds has begun to narrow, with a sort of
definitive recognition of the intrinsic potential of the web as alternative
form of entertainment to traditional media, so to speak.
More than a general agreement, we refer mainly to the
numerous television, sports and entertainment public figures who have decided
to get involved online, trying to strike up a dialogue with the same most
popular streamers without looking at them from above. below, managing instead
to tear down some walls that until recently seemed impassable.
Perhaps the traditional mainstream television world and that
of the web will never be able to truly integrate harmoniously, leaving a sort
of eternal rivalry suspended in the air to grab the highest number of plays,
views and viewers, but it is undeniable that precisely in the last period there
has been a slight rapprochement on both sides.
The biggest obstacle, however, lies in the target audiences
of the two media, sometimes too far apart.
In fact, the interest of young and very young people for the
web is indisputable, able to find that kind of entertainment on online
platforms that unfortunately nowadays generalist TV has enormous difficulty in
producing, obviously striving to look for a minimum of quality content and
without dwelling only on appearances. .
Similarly, the more adult audience has not yet managed to
get in perfect harmony with the social world, continuing to prefer generalist
TV.
One of the best attempts of traditional TV to enter into a
pact between these two worlds is probably the transmission Una pezza di
Lundini., a comic / satirical themed program that has been able to intercept
the web audience in the best possible way while actually broadcasting on a
traditional and mainstream network such as Rai 2, intelligently amalgamating
the best of both worlds.
The hope, for the future, is to see in any case a greater
integration between two media that are actually not so distant, striving to
leave controversy aside to focus instead on what really matters: all-round
entertainment , which embraces every possible media, and why not, in which we
return to speak clearly and decisively about innovation, modernization and
experimentalism.
