Striscia La Notizia appears to have reached the end of its run after 38 years of satire, investigations and political ridicule on Italian television.
Mediaset has not formally announced the programme’s definitive cancellation. However, Striscia has been omitted from the company’s schedules for the 2026–2027 television season, while its social-media accounts have stopped being updated. Mediaset chief executive Pier Silvio Berlusconi said earlier this month that discussions with the programme’s creator, Antonio Ricci, were still taking place, but no plan for its return has been announced.
Created by satirical television writer Antonio Ricci, the programme first aired on Italia 1 on 7 November 1988 before moving to Canale 5 in December 1989. It eventually became a permanent fixture in the access-prime-time slot following the evening news.
For generations of Italian viewers—and Maltese families accustomed to watching Italian television—it combined comedy, political satire, journalistic investigations, hidden-camera reports and public complaints in a format that was accessible to a mass audience.
Its historic daily run ended on 7 June 2025 after its 37th season. The programme returned between January and February 2026 for a reduced 38th season consisting of five weekly prime-time specials presented by its veteran hosts Ezio Greggio and Enzo Iacchetti.
The experiment failed to restore the programme to its previous prominence. The final special, broadcast on 19 February, reportedly attracted approximately 1.48 million viewers and a 10.3% audience share. Meanwhile, Gerry Scotti’s La Ruota della Fortuna, which replaced Striscia in its traditional evening slot, became one of Canale 5’s strongest programmes and has been confirmed for the coming season.
Some of the most consequential reports broadcast by Striscia La Notizia concerned the television saleswoman Wanna Marchi, her daughter Stefania Nobile and their associates.
The investigation began after a viewer contacted the programme and helped it record a telephone conversation revealing how vulnerable customers were being sold supposedly lucky lottery numbers, magical remedies and protection from curses.
The first report was aired on 27 November 2001. The ensuing criminal investigation led to arrests in January 2002, while Marchi and Nobile were subsequently convicted of participation in a criminal association established to commit fraud. Both received ten-year prison sentences at first instance in 2006.
In October 1997, the programme discovered hundreds of prefabricated housing units lying unused at a military depot in Pizzighettone. The units had been intended for people displaced by natural disasters and could have been used following the devastating earthquake that struck Umbria and Marche that year. The Civil Protection Department began recovering the structures after the report was broadcast.
The programme also spent years documenting absenteeism and mismanagement in public institutions. Between 2009 and 2016, its reporter Luca Abete produced a series of reports on conditions at Naples’ Loreto Mare hospital, where patients were shown waiting on stretchers in overcrowded corridors and suffering from shortages of basic supplies.
In 2017, investigators placed 55 employees under house arrest as part of an absenteeism investigation involving 94 suspects. Striscia had broadcast 12 reports from the hospital during the preceding years.
Other recurring investigations concerned unfinished public works, fraudulent healers, deceptive advertising, mistreatment of animals, environmental contamination and public employees who registered their attendance before abandoning their workplaces.
The programme’s most recognisable instrument of political ridicule was the Tapiro d’Oro, a golden tapir presented to politicians, celebrities and public figures who had suffered embarrassment or become involved in controversy.
Recipients included Antonio Di Pietro, Giulio Andreotti, Romano Prodi, Silvio Berlusconi, Massimo D’Alema, Matteo Salvini and Vittorio Sgarbi. The award allowed Striscia to confront politicians outside the controlled environment of studios and press conferences, often forcing them to respond while being pursued by correspondent Valerio Staffelli and a television crew.
However, the programme was not without serious criticism. Its use of lightly dressed female dancers known as the Veline was repeatedly accused of contributing to the sexualisation and objectification of women on Italian television. Ricci insisted that the dancers were intended as a parody of the use of women’s bodies by magazines and television, and the word velina itself eventually entered Italian political vocabulary as a disparaging description of attractive women promoted without sufficient qualifications.
Despite its contradictions, Striscia La Notizia created a distinctive form of popular television journalism. It mixed serious investigations with slapstick humour, hidden cameras, aggressive confrontations and relentless mockery of those in power.
Its apparent disappearance marks the end not only of a television programme but of an era in which a single evening broadcast could transform a local complaint, a political embarrassment or an obscure fraud into a subject discussed by millions of people the following morning.
Newsroom
Leave a Reply