Pippo Baudo is dead, TV is dead

The news hits my phone like a thunderous crack from a midsummer storm. Pippo Baudo has left us, on a Saturday night, his most memorable night.

The Saturday nights of Canzonissima, Fantastico, and the Sanremo Music Festival finals. He's the grand admiral of Rai television entertainment. He's the Superman of presenters. He's the last of the Mohicans. After Corrado, Enzo Tortora, and Mike Bongiorno, he's the last of TV's Four Musketeers.

Between unforgettable Sundays in and a myriad of television variety shows, he was the epitome of a generalist television host. That "here you are" became an endless glossary of encyclopedic references , the fruit of his infinite knowledge of the entertainment world and beyond.

With the passing of Pippo Baudo, television dies. The concept of television, which it was and in some ways still is, dies definitively, even if infinitely watered down by the rules and regulations that govern it today.

The death of Pippo Baudo and TV deserves a strong signal tonight, like the all-classical music broadcast. A significant, powerful, and tremendously disruptive counterattack, like that thunderous, thunderous bastard that killed Pippo and TV on a Saturday night in mid-August.