On 2 October 2007, with a live video announcement on Rai3, by Fabio Fazio, the Renzo Arbore Channel starts. You read that right, 2007: at the dawn of the social era. Renzo Arbore has always been an innovator in the field of television; but he was also a pioneer of the network. In his channel, still active although not updated, but, believe me, unmissable, there is also a clip that recalls how it all started.
You can see Renzo Arbore in a press conference with Gianni Borgna, at the time councilor for culture of the Municipality of Rome, who fixes a camera saying “we are internationally connected all over the world through the owner of my site, Denis Gianniberti, it is technologically a thing very advanced, I don’t know how to do it, I think it’s a miracle, maybe it’s Padre Pio… ”. What does it contain? “Television and even cinematographic preciousness, and more…”, explains Arbore in the aforementioned clip. This channel “I have hatched for many and many years, I was a forerunner …”.
Sifting through the “Renzo’s Malefattes” schedule, as Arbore himself invites us to do, you will find memorable clips with Gigi Proietti and Lucio Dalla, Mina and Lucio Battisti, Massimo Troisi and Fabrizio De Andrè, Joe Cocker and James Brown, and Roberto Benigni.
But there are not only distant memories. On 9 June 2019 Renzo Arbore organizes a flash-mob: “Swing dance is performed simultaneously in 42 Italian cities” (the video is a beauty). From March 2020 a new program made especially for the web has started, “50 smiles from Naples”, also on YouTube.
I’m sure if he were just a little bit younger now, Renzo Arbore, he would drive us crazy and smile playing between TikTok and Twitch.
.