Makes low ratings, suspended Journey into the Great Beauty, Channel 5's cultural program

Due to low ratings, one of the few cultural programs of Mediaset networks closes prematurely: it is Viaggio nella Grande Bellezza, the appointment with which, every Tuesday, actor Cesare Bocci, in the role of popularizer, took Channel 5 viewers around Italy, each time accompanied by experts (museum directors, art historians, archaeologists, etc.). The episode on Tuesday, January 19, dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, was therefore the last: the two additional episodes planned for the coming weeks, centered on Turin the first (the film Rocketman will be aired instead) and Assisi the second, have been suspended.

Journey to the Great Beauty was a sort of Mediaset’s response to the overwhelming power of Alberto Angela ’s popular programs on Rai: however, Mediaset being a commercial network, its dynamics are very much tied to ratings, and those of the program hosted by Bocci evidently were deemed to be very unsatisfactory. The episodes hovered around an average of just under 2 million viewers: the last one, the one about Leonardo, drew just 1,665,000, with a share of 8.8 percent (Auditel data), considered very disappointing by several insiders. Bocci, on Tuesday, was beaten by the Roma-Spezia match in the Coppa Italia (more than 2 million viewers, 9.3% share) and also risked being overtaken by an action film on Italia 1(Rampage. Animal Fury), which stopped at 1,573,000 viewers.

The result, for Channel 5, is also modest in relation to the other programs on the same network that air in the evening time slot: to give an idea, Big Brother Vip gets ratings twice as high as Journey into Great Beauty (on Monday, January 18, it had 3.215,000 viewers, 19 percent share), and Barbara D’Urso’s Sunday talk show scores +2.2 percent over Cesare Bocci’s cultural program (Sunday, Jan. 17 had 1,995,000 viewers, 11 percent share). And even without bothering a ratings champion like C’è Posta per te (more than 6 million viewers last Saturday, 30 percent share), Journey to the Great Beauty was by far the least-watched program of the week on Channel 5 in prime time, also beaten by the Boldi and De Sica film Amici come prima that aired on Friday the 15th (3.1 million, 12.8 percent share), Thursday’s Turkish soap opera Daydreamer (1.967,000, 9.2%) and by the TV series Made in Italy whose first episode aired last Wednesday (3,249,000, 13.7%).

And to think that Viaggio nella Grande Bellezza had also gotten off to a good start: after a good pilot episode (the one on December 18, 2019, about the Vatican: 2,327,000 viewers with 12% share) and a muted start in this second season (the first one, however, with more than one date), the second episode had well exceeded two million viewers, with 10.1% share. Of course, last Tuesday’s concomitance of the government crisis did not help, so much so that the most-watched programs were the political talk shows, but the decline in the audience for Channel 5’s cultural program was already a trend anyway. It now remains to be seen whether the last two episodes will be cancelled, or, as is more likely, whether they will be rebroadcast at another time, perhaps in a different time slot, deemed more appropriate by Mediaset for the audience that follows this program.

Still, it is a pity: the possibility of seeing Channel 5 more oriented toward culture fades away, since until now the Mediaset flagship has always devoted itself almost exclusively to entertainment. Clearly a drastic choice for the network’s regular audience. And on social media there has been no shortage of strong criticism. But for now, the goal of doing culture in prime time on Channel 5 remains an ambition.

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Makes low ratings, suspended Journey into the Great Beauty, Channel 5's cultural program

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