Upon closer inspection, Luciano Rispoli – who died 10 years ago – was a superhero, who succeeded in the unrepeatable feat of making Italians fall in love with their own language. And not with a multiple choice quiz, based on mere luck. On Rai1 afternoons in the mid-eighties, «Parola mia» made us play with etymologies, meanings of words, idioms, proverbs… And the competitors, mostly university students, had to draw on their knowledge, answer questions on poems and pages of Italian literature. Even write a text live. The referee of that unforgettable broadcast was an affable university professor, Gian Luigi Beccaria, who became famous well before Alessandro Barbero.
But Rai, mother in the common vulgate, knows how to be a stepmother with some. He has forgotten Luciano Rispoli, who on public TV – where he joined at the inauguration of the official programs, following a public competition for radio commentators and the final audition of the legendary Vittorio Veltroni – gave almost 40 years of his very high professionalism. Born in Reggio Calabria in 1932, he was a manager, creator, author, famous presenter but above all an innovator, both on the radio and on the small screen. Retracing his parable means crossing and in some cases overturning the history of the mass media. Perhaps this is why they are struggling to pay homage to him as he deserves, even though Fiorello proposed Room A in via Asiago for him.
Rispoli was the driving force behind the renewal of the medium, to which he brought very high ratings. At the beginning he played in the legendary Tele-Radiosquadre (like Tortora, Zavoli, Martellini) and always for the radio he invented little things like «La corrida», «Bandiera Gialla», «Caliate Roma 3131» and «Gran Varietà», often against the opinion of the program directors who would have wanted to maintain the trappings of the offer. The use of the telephone, which opened the microphones to the voices of the «Call Rome 3131» public, also transferred to TV. Just think of «Telefono giallo» by Corrado Augias. And it was on television that Rispoli acquired his great popularity, so even today social media resonate with his characteristic phrase: “What beautiful words!”.
«The game of professions», «We talk a lot about them», «Interview with science», the aforementioned «Parola mia», «Silver and Gold», «The great race», «A great occasion», «The network»: artisanal programs – we were not in the era of comfortable formats – always in the name of cultured entertainment and dissemination. And it was Rispoli with «L’Ospite delle due» in 1975 who launched a very civil conversation in the living room with characters of the caliber of Ingrid Bergman, Amedeo Nazzari, Carlo Rambaldi, Dario Argento. Radiocorriere wrote about it as the «first example of a talk show in Italy». Maurizio Costanzo arrived the following year with «Goodness them». In 1983, Rispoli also wanted to innovate the formula by bringing guests to the table at “Pranzo in tv”. Since 1991, other good programs for TMC, above all “Tappeto Volante”, which kept alive the idea of a third pole (prestigious guests, ratings and considerable advertising revenue) until the birth of La7. It even aired for one edition on Raisat Album (2001).
With us, however, memory proceeds out of convenience. The Rai leaders were quick to name studies after Fabrizio Frizzi, Raffaella Carrà, Pippo Baudo and not him. Who knows, maybe first the mayors of Reggio Calabria and Soverato, where Luciano Rispoli spent his adolescence, will wake up and want to dedicate a street, a seafront, a library, a park or a bench to him. To their good hearts!
Mariano Sabatini, TV author and writer