hydrarchist writes: This piece by Agnese Trocchi was originally published in the wonderful review of culture, politics and technology that travels under the name of Mute

SHORT HISTORY OF STREET TVs IN ITALY (1972-2003)

San Lorenzo, Rome, near Termini station: a tall antenna towering over
the roof of a high squatted building where migrants families are live
illegally. Its name is TeleAut and it's a streetTV that is exploiting
the umbra of a local channel and is on air everyday from 9pm to 9am on
channel uhf 27.
The name, TeleAut, is homage to RadioAut, an independent radio which
was broadcasting in 1977 from a village near Palermo, Sicily. On the 9th of
May 1978, the day when the body of Aldo Moro was founded killed by Red
Brigades, another corpse was found, blown-up on the railway between
Palermo and Cinisi, it was the corpse of Peppino Impastato, the founder
of RadioAut, killed by Mafia.Italian history is made of hidden truths and
independent voices which have always struggled to express themselves
by every media necessary.

The first streetTV was born in 1972 in Biella, a village in the north
of Italy as a "video-magazine" appealing to the art.21 of Italian
Constitution, which establishes the right to expression by every means.
In 1973 TeleBiella became illegal following a decree of the Minister of
Telecommunications, but as art. 21 was not being upheld TeleBiella
appealed against the conviction and in 1974 the Constitutional Court decreed the
end of the radio-tele monopoly granted to RAI .

It's the starting point of the proliferation of private TV channels,
the expansion of advertising on TVs and the creation of Berlusconi's
empire.

Italian airwaves becomes a wild-west and Berlusconi seems to be the
faster shooter.

In the same twenty years the social texture has changed profoundly:
television has become a household tool, children have grown up in a
new anthropologic space defined by fluxes of cathodes images, they
develop new needs.
They cannot hate TV, they want to make it.
Video technologies have become consumer goods, videoplayers, amateur
cameras and computers, for editing and for sharing on the internet,
have changed the perception of the consumer who is no longer passive
but she/he's becoming the producer.

This "hackers" attitude of "putting your hands on" emerges when in 1998
in the csoa CPA Florence during the first Hackmeeting , another experiment
of streetTV took place . As "La TV del Pratello" (Bologna, 1996) and
OffLineTv (Roma, CSOA Forte Prenestino, 1996-97-98), BoicoopTV is a
temporary experience, on air only few days. The aim is to
re-appropriate media as a public access zone a dirty console that
everyone can join broadcasting his/her own visions.

At the end of the 90's we can still consider this experiences as
avanguard, but now, in the new millennium, street tv's is becoming a reality for
all social groups: in 2002 OrfeoTV was born broadcasting on the umbra
of MTV (uhf 51 in Bologna). It started the campaign www.telestreet.it to
create a network of streetTVs.

In every city, town and village from north to south, little independent
self-managed sisters spring from local neighbourhoods to condominiums.
What is important is to meet one another, share knowledge, re-activate
brains, build collective narrations.

Technically the kit is simple: an aerial, cable, transmitter, amplifier
which everyone can collect.

Legally the situation is not nice: to build a street TV is illegal, a
streetTV can only make appeal to art. 21. So in May 2003 Senators of
Rifondazione Comunista introduced a legislative proposal to
grant umbra to the local streetTVs while on the other hand Ministry of
Communication is emitting decrees ad hoc to protect his Cavaliere's
empire.

Waiting for the passage to the digital terrestrial which in 2006 will
provide more then 100 new channels, we expect a new wild-west in the
ether, but this time cowboys and sheriffs will not have easy life, there are
pirate-hordes who are taking communications into their own hands.

Agnese Trocchi

Nettography:

www.telestreet.it

www.telebiella.it

www.comunicazioni.it/en/index.php

www.ecn.org/hackit98/faq_en.html

www.peppinoimpastato.com

-------------------------------------------------- -----"