Rai Fiction

Rai’s production of TV fiction series is a strong point of programming and production for Rai and for the Italian audiovisual sector in general.

2011 was a particularly positive year for Rai’s fiction series, with regard to the results of broadcasting and the launch of new productions to broadcast in subsequent seasons.

Firstly, Rai’s tv fiction series have succeeded in strengthening its relationship with the public.
Despite the increase in the number of channels now broadcasting and competition from new media, both the offering and the viewing figures for Rai’s tv fiction series grew in absolute terms during 2011, by 14 prime time slots and 140,000 viewers compared to the previous year, which was positive too.

Fiction is the genre most programmed in prime time by Rai’s ‘flagship channel’, is leader in terms of audience and supplied an essential contribution also to the prime time of Rai 3, with the soap opera Un Posto al Sole, the main European soap opera broadcast in prime time, which has been made for over 15 years by the Rai production centre in Naples.

With over 900 hours of in-house produced fiction series broadcast by Rai’s general-interest channels during the year, Rai Fiction is an essential instrument of the company’s programming independence.
Thanks to original production, Rai does not depend on the dynamics of the international product market, but can give space to the best Italian artistic and production resources, independently defining its programming style and offering its public, in Italy and abroad, a high-quality setting due to the stories, characters, places, culture and lifestyles of our country.

In this context, variety and a pluralism of stories, formats and languages characterise Rai’s TV fiction series and were particularly evident in 2011.

The record level of none million viewers, an increasingly rare event in Europe and internationally, was exceeded five times by Rai’s TV fiction series in 2011.

As well as four new TV films in the Il Commissario Montalbano series (purchased and broadcast this year also by the BBC), stories of redemption and commitment like Atelier Fontana, high impact social issues such as Sarò sempre tuo padre on the subject of separated fathers, or Storia di Laura on the theme of drug addiction, pages of our history, like Edda e il comunista, the Risorgimento with Violetta and the fairy tale for the whole family, Cinderella, were among the year’s events.

Even more important from an industrial point of view, the increase and the success of Rai’s series, from confirmations such as Don Matteo 8, Un medico in famiglia 7, Tutti Pazzi per Amore 3 and Il commissario Manara 2, to new serial productions, like A un passo da cielo in the unprecedented setting of Alto Adige, Fuoriclasse with Luciana Littizzetto as a teacher in Turin and Che Dio ci aiuti set in Modena, also testifying to the capacity of Rai’s TV fiction series to represent the whole of Italy.

The products of Rai Fiction are distinguished by a high suitability for repetition, both on the general-interest and specialised channels (particularly Rai Premium), and to an ever increasing extent on the Internet.

Rai Fiction adds to the TV fiction series production activity that of the coproduction of cartoons.

These are usually serial productions, for children and for the whole family, which feed the daily children’s programming of Rai 2 and the specialised channels Rai YoYo and Rai Gulp, with an original production which flanks, with excellent results and appreciation, the best products purchased internationally.
The titles for 2011 include the European co-production The Little Prince, based on the masterpiece by Saint- Exupéry, and the special Il generale e i fratellini d’Italia, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italian Unifications, with the patronage of the Italia 150 Committee.