Радио Radicale: История и особенности вещания

Radio Radicale is the official radio station of the Italian Radical Party. Founded in 1976 as part of the Radio libere ("Free Radio”) movement, it has no commercial advertisements and is partly funded by the party, with support from the Italian government as part of an agreement for the broadcasting of Parliamentary sessions.

Radio Radicale was founded between 1975 and 1976 by a group belonging to the Radical Party in a small apartment near Villa Pamphili, in the Gianicolense district of Rome. Following the liberalization of radio broadcasting by the Constitutional Court between 1974 and 1976, and the spread of small private radio stations, Radio Radicale was known for its use of low cost equipment but it stood out for its particular philosophy. Radio Radicale set out to create a valid public service alternative to the state broadcaster RAI, using the name “Radicale” (radical not just in reference to its role as a party organ but also for an editorial policy characterized by impartiality, professionalism and innovation. The initiative of uncensored phone calls was repeated in 1991 and 1993. The official website was created in 1998, expanding the station’s audio programming with multimedia content. The full archive was placed online for free download.

In 1997, the Prodi I Cabinet refused to renew the agreement with Radio Radicale for the broadcast of parliamentary sessions and RAI began to develop its own dedicated radio station 7 years since the law which instituted it. Important cultural and political personalities asked the government to consider the so called "Mammì bill"—which obliged Rai to create a parliamentary radio channel—null and void. The proposal was to extend the agreement with Radio Radicale for another 3 years, and to allow for a call for tender when the contract would come up for renewal. Following a political debate with demonstrations and nonviolent initiatives by the Radicals, the Parliament approved the law Nº 224 of 11 July 1998 concerning Radio broadcasting of Parliament's work and benefits for publishing. The law established the call for tender as a stipulation of the agreement and renewed the contract with Radio Radicale for another three years. RAI’s obligation to broadcast parliamentary sessions was kept, but the public company was prevented from extending its radio network until the entry into force of the telecommunications general reform. In 2001, 2004 and 2006, the agreement with Radio Radicale was renewed according to the stipulations of the financial law. Under the contract, Radio Radicale has to broadcast, between 8 am and 9 pm, at least 60% of the annual total number of hours dedicated by the Parliament to the sessions in the chambers. Those broadcasts cannot be interrupted, preceded or followed, for a period of thirty minutes from their beginning and their end, by commercial or political advertisements.

For 2010 and 2011, the agreement with the Ministry of Economic Development included a €9.9 million funding for Centro di produzione S. p. a. For 2012, two laws of 2011 allowed a total expenditure of €10 million and for 2013 the same amount was confirmed in 2012.

Up to 2018, Radio Radicale received €8.2 million, according to the agreement with the Ministry of Economic Development for the broadcast of parliamentary sessions, and another €4 million as acontribution to their publishing activities. has prolonged the agreement for the parliamentary session broadcasting by Radio Radicale for only one semester, allocating €5 million gross (€4 million net) for the year 2019.

Hours of audio and video recordings are made every year through a system of connections with public institutions and events. Signals are received through fixed or temporary lines by wire, radio, satellite or digital links and, when using analog telephone lines, recordings are immediately digitalised by an encoding system which produces ten channels at the same time around the clock. Once the signal reaches the main headquarters, the different signals are diffused through an active matrix system which allows the distribution of 128 signals. In the same year, the archive was quoted in the volume Fonti orali: censimento degli istituti di conservazione published by the Italian Ministry of Cultural and Environmental Heritage, (The Multimedial Archive of Radio Radicale: an Heritage for History, Information, Democracy), organized by RR along with the Doctorate of Research on European History and the Archivists and Librarists Special School of the Sapienza University of Rome, various critics and archivist agreed in recognizing not only the historical and social value of the archival production of Radio Radicale, but also its complementarity with the main collections of Italian documents, first of all those belonging to RAI. The former manager of Rai Teche, Barbara Scaramucci, stated that:

Quote|The archive of Radio Radicale is absolutely precious and entirely complementary with the one of Rai [and] is true that a large part of the materials inside the archive of Radio Radicale is not inside the archive of Radio Rai and the work done by Radio Radicale since 1976 is completely different from that one done by Rai radio broadcasting.

Online since 1998, the website of Radio Radicale has been one of the first in Italy to stream actuality videos on the web and nowadays political, social and institutional events of the past and of recent times are always available for all the citizens. (Which struggles and laws to be done immediately for technological revolution, for liberal revolution), attended by the major Italian entrepreneurs of ITs and telecommunications, lawyers and other specialists of that field. All the hardware units of the content archive and distribution system are allocated in Roma into two different server farms located in the headquarter of Centro di Produzione Spa. CC licences represent an important instrument for the realization of the main purpose of Radio Radicale concerning the publicity of democratic decisional moments, the promotion of the access to direct knowledge about political events for the largest number of citizens and the free circulation of ideas.

In 2006 the editorial board of RadioRadicale. it created FaiNotizia. it, the first Italian website of citizen journalism: based on Newsvine, it was intended as a social and journalistic experiment and an attempt to use the new free and collaborative attitude of the new media at the time, creating a new model of information. On Fai notizia, registered users could collaborate in searching and writing the news, loading texts, videos, photos, evidencing interesting news found on other websites or blogs. Users commented and voted the reports made by other members and could start collaborative investigations. All the content had been published under Creative Commons licences. In 2012 Fai notizia was completely renewed and transformed into a format of investigations distributed by Radio Radicale, which offers now little payments for who collaborates in creating reports about great issues of public interest.