Mike Bongiorno is Dead

Mike Bongiorno is dead.  It had 85 years.  And ‘been victim of a coronary while he was found at Montecarlo.  He was a piece of story of the Italian television.  It was he to important from the United States the television question and to give life, more lately, to innovative format and to a revolutionary style of management.  He has been conducting, author, supporter, writer, climber, and entrepreneur.  It leaves the wife, Daniela, and the three sons Michelino, Nicolò and Leonardo.  In these days is gotten ready to a new debut: that with the new question Rischia tutto on Sky, where the expiration of the contract with Mediaset had landed after.  And where it had known a second, fortunate youth to the flank of Fiorello: first in the ad TV, then with the raids in its shows.  “With him – it had told to Republic – I would do whatever. 

 We invent ourselves all we, and we amuse ourselves a bag”.  The childhood and the war.  Mike Bongiorno, Michael Nicholas Savior Bongiorno, is born at New York May 26 of 1924.  Its mother is from turin, its italian-american father.  It is transferred in Italy still child, studies to Turin, during the Second world war leaves the studies and it is united to the partisan formations: thanks to its mastery of the English one comes employed like relay for the communications with the allies.  Captured from the Nazi, it spends seven months in the prison of San Vittore (neighbor of cell of Indro Montanelli), later on comes transferred first in the concentration camp of Bolzano then in that of Mauthausen.  He was saved thanks to an exchange of prisoners between Germany and United States.  It returns at New York, from 1946 works for the radio of the daily one “The italian-american progress” in the program you Shout and times from the Italy.  It returns in Italy, definitive, in 1953, called to work the newborn television.  And ‘he inaugurates the first day of transmissions, January 3 of 1954, with the program you arrive and departures. 

It leaves or it doubles?.  The program that decrees its success Is Left or doubles?, instigator to the American “A question from 64000 dollars”.  The verification of public is unimaginable: who not possessed a television set at home meets in the bar, the question becomes a popular moment of aggregation, to the Thursday – when the program goes in wave – climbs them film close the wings.  The sight of the question is a collective rite.  Umberto Echo picks the social course and to the end of the sixties analyzes it in its test Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno: the roots of such success, writes Echo, I am in the “absolute mediocrity” of the character, in which the onlooker “sees praised and honored officially of national authority the retract of the actual limits”.  From that moment every its program is a triumph.  From Belltower evening (1960) to Hunting to the number (1972), from The fair of the dreams (1963-1965) to Games in family (1966-1967), since yesterday and today (1976) to we Bet (1977) to Flash (1980).  With Rischiatutto (1970-1974) – one of the most important programs of Mike – for the first time come introduced in television the elettrocnica and the special effects  and introduced  “valletta speaking”, Savin Ciuffini.  The meeting with Berlusconi.  Fundamental the contribution of Bongiorno to the birth and to the ascent of the TV deprived.