{"id":181,"date":"2009-09-16T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2009-09-16T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/?p=181"},"modified":"2009-09-16T09:00:57","modified_gmt":"2009-09-16T13:00:57","slug":"mike-bongiorno-il-re-del-quiz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/mike-bongiorno-il-re-del-quiz\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Bongiorno, il Re del Quiz"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\">On the 8th September 2009 Mike Bongiorno, <strong>il Re del Quiz<\/strong> (The King of the Quiz), passed away from a heart attack, aged 85. Born in the United States\u00a0of an\u00a0Italian mother and Italian-American father, Mike Bongiorno was one of the\u00a0very first Italian television presenters,\u00a0having been on air since the birth of the new media in January 1954. He has always been considered Italy\u2019s \u2018King of Quiz\u2019 largely because\u00a0it was him who\u00a0introduced the quiz show concept to Italian TV. The first of these was named\u00a0<strong>Lascia o Raddoppia?<\/strong> (Leave or Double), the Italian version of an American show called\u00a0<em>The $64,000 Question<\/em>. This show\u00a0was\u00a0so successful with audiences that cinemas all over Italy had to stay closed when the program was broadcast every Thursday night between 1955 and 1959. <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\">Following his early success\u00a0Mike Bongiorno went on to presente an incredible series of popular games, inducing the writer Umberto Eco to pen an essay in the early Sixties entitled <strong>Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno<\/strong> (A study of the Mike Bongiorno phenomenon). In his study, Eco\u00a0sustains that the success of Mike Bongiorno is due to his \u201cabsolute mediocrity\u201d, in other words the spectator sees his\/her own mediocre limitations glorified. Mike Bongiorno was\u00a0also famous for his many gaffes, which included asking a widow about her husband\u2019s health, or making mistakes while reading the questions and not noticing them, a factor which also contributed to the sense of mediocrity presented in the shows. But these famous gaffes were one of his trademarks and made him a more memorable personality, therefore they were never edited from his shows, even when the programs were prerecorded.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\">One of his most important shows was <strong>Rischiatutto<\/strong> (Risk Everything)<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>broadcast from 1970 to 1974, which introduced the \u2018technology\u2019 element, special effects, and even <strong>la valletta \u201cparlante\u201d <\/strong>(the \u201ctalking\u201d assistant) to TV. But Mike Bongiorno was more than just a quiz show presenter, he was\u00a0also the person who introduced <strong>pubblicit\u00e0 <\/strong>(commercials) to\u00a0Italian TV, including quiz shows sponsored by private businesses, such as car, or clothing\u00a0manufacturers, who gain publicity through the show. <\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\">Mike Bongiorno was <strong>un infaticabile lavoratore<\/strong> (a tireless worker) and, despite his age, he was still active and working up until the day he died, in fact he was scheduled to start a new show later this year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\">I will end with Bongiorno\u2019s famous trademark exclamation:<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\">Allegria!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the 8th September 2009 Mike Bongiorno, il Re del Quiz (The King of the Quiz), passed away from a heart attack, aged 85. Born in the United States\u00a0of an\u00a0Italian mother and Italian-American father, Mike Bongiorno was one of the\u00a0very first Italian television presenters,\u00a0having been on air since the birth of the new media in&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/mike-bongiorno-il-re-del-quiz\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[792],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","tag-mike-bongiorno"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}