The mystery StraMorgan: the musical show conceived and conducted by Morgan and Pino Strabioli that opens up questions. We haven’t seen a show like this in years. Here because
A good record this year: a finally good program has passed on RAI (before “watchable” there were only the matches of the Italian Cup). It’s called StraMorgan, a show that deals with music, broadcast on RAI 2 in the late evening: poetic, overflowing with ideas, pop and at the same time cultured, disturbing with an almost moving charge of energy. A program that stages the creative act and what’s inside. How you do it, how to become a work of art. Masters like Modugno, Bindi, Battiato, Battisti, Presley, Mercury, Eno, Bowie did it. No one had staged something like this for years.
All in 6 hourswhere the Public Service returns to experiment with 4 episodes dedicated to author songs and produced internally by RAI, a rare practice these days. On the contrary, private television agencies, external to RAI, do everything.
Ma there are two StraMorgans, the one on television screens with its charm and audience numbers and the one described by the newspapers, which talk about flops. We wondered why? Was it a flop?
Even if audience ratings often don’t coincide with quality, just read RAI’s ratings to understand if it’s true.
Per Stra Morgan we talk about one average share of 4.37% of viewers. Early evening 3.43%; second 6.63%; third 3.97%; fourth 3.44% (average: 339,000 spectators).
For example, if we watched another programme, broadcast on the same network, RAI 2, and in the same time slot, “Tonight there is Cattelan on RAI 2”we find that the 2022 airing hit an average share of 3,24% of viewers, 18 episodes (average 300,000 viewers). Nobody thought it was a flop. Why this different treatment?
So in 2023 for “Stasera c’è Cattelan su RAI 2” another 30 episodes arrive with a share of 5.04%. The average of “Cattelan”, between the two editions, is 4.14%. StraMorgan has an average of 4.37%.
And “Tonight there is Cattelan on RAI 2” lived on the drag of the same format that aired on Sky 1 from 2014 to 2020 plus the exposure of Alessandro Cattelan to host Eurovision 2022. Mengoni wins Sanremo and goes to Cattelan. So do the other famous singers of the Festival. Other guests? From Fiorello to Elettra Lamborghini, from Elodie to Panariello, film actors such as Pierfrancesco Favino and Edoardo Leo, up to politicians such as Elly Schlein. A program of far more firepower than the small one StraMorgan, cooked and eaten inside mamma RAI in a few days.
For the newspapers Morgan is to blame for conveying too right-wing content indeed no, sorry, too much of the left. He’s excessively intellectual, no, he’s too pop, he’s not a positive character (drugs, women…), he’s a crazy horse, he makes attacks on strong powers that don’t exist, on platforms for listening to music, what does that have to do with it? , And when did he write the last hit song? she no longer has the voice of a time eh !, etc, etc…
But from our RAI sources, also confirmed by former executives, it seems that the problem is not the ratings, which are really good, but another one that goes hand in hand with the big news: Morgan it has no agent. Or rather: the problem is not having one of the private production companies that sells programs to RAI as an agency. Don’t anger the companies outside RAI that produce the majority of the programs scheduled in the Public Service!
We live in a generalist TV whose purpose is to be uniform, some would say flat as a surfboard, unwatchable and boring for viewers (not so much for private agencies, when they read their turnover). Not by chance at least 17 million Italians have migrated to paid platforms. Millions don’t even watch TV. And that means revenue and advertising that shift.
To understand the strange short circuit between TV programming and quality, just look at the Italian Song Festival, San Remo. We always come back to the music. Over the years, on long-term listening, most of the songs sound similar, all of them; over time, nothing remains in auditory memory but it’s not our ear’s fault: it happens because the arrangers who work are practically always the same, a small group that works for the very few private producers.
Same theme for i TV Programs: there are very few agents who follow the conductors and guests and very few private production houses that have multiplied their activities exponentially in the last decade. The authors and technicians I worked with are a swarm of subjects, always the same, who migrate from one program to another, over and over again, giving this sense of uniformity to the whole. Programs are a copy of a copy of a copy. Same faces, same smilessame jokes, same scripts, same cheerfulness.
In StraMorgan instead we see man again, at the center of the creative act. A being who gets excited, experiences, falls, suffers with poetry, makes mistakes, gets angry, gets up again, is disturbing, unpredictable, out of place. And above all, he is imperfect and not afraid to show it. This is his strength and the greatness of him.
In a society, increasingly artificial and controlled, is a little gem that brings back the humanity of the narrated authors and of the protagonist Marco (Morgan) Castoldi, in summary the authenticity of the human soul that finds itself unprepared for the world. Show patterns of imperfection which are the basis of the creative and artistic process, unlike the performances and skill of the various plastic talent and educational models.
In this media universe where everything is fake, reassuring, constructed, he goes on TV, undresses and dresses again. And there it shows that pain, the miseries of the human soul can become art and greatness through a transformation. Above all, it reminds us Italians that we have the ability to face a problem and turn it upside down into art. We live immersed in it, following the example of thousands of men in history who have done the same. And it is a message addressed to new generationsborn after the advent of the internet, which they find themselves as fate carrying a cell phone for a walk. They think they are consumers and instead they are consumed: they are the ones who are instrumental to the masters of technologies.
StraMorgan reminds us that our roots are not the media, entertainment society or cell phones but the emotions and the brain, the will to fight, to rebel when necessary.
It is as if he shouted to each of them: don’t believe in the vacuum of conformism, it’s not true that you are worthless, you don’t have to conform. Having emotions that disturb you and cross your soul are an opportunity. It’s not something to run away from, hiding behind an account.
And when have you ever seen a co-presenter, Strabioli, who doesn’t have the anxiety of stardom and doesn’t jostle to steal the floor from the shareholder?
StraMorgan certainly has a big flaw: is “out of context”.
But spectators give us a very different photograph from the one described by the newspapers.
Those who have salt in the pumpkin should hope in aunt Stramorgan, indeed that programs like this are the beginning of an alliance between intellectuals and workers of Italian culture, free from the establishment that has been leading the country for decades, to ensure that the “out of context” becomes a direction or at least a spirit.
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