Writing Games

As in the United States and in many countries across Europe, the quizshow was a founding genre for Italian television as far back as the 1950s:because of their broad appeal, such game shows as Lascia o raddoppia and Ilmusichiere contributed strongly to television’s burgeoning popularity duringthe subsequent decades. Since then, the quiz show has traversed differenteras of television history, with partial and gradual changes to its textualfeatures, aesthetics and narratives, as well as its production routines.Since the 1980s, with deregulation and the advent of commercial television,the Italian game-show market has become more international and more relianton formats. In the genre’s long history, the “hidden profession” of writingTV games exhibits elements of both continuity and change. The needs offormat-adaptation have highlighted two main areas of “localization”:question-writing and casting. This essay explores the profession ofgame-show writer in Italy and how the role has evolved. It adopts ahistorical framework to illuminate the continuity and change in theprofession, in relation to a broader history of both the genre and thetelevision medium, while also seeking to outline both the specificity of theItalian TV context and its connections with an internationalenvironment.