Giancarlo Santalmassi, a protagonist of the airwaves always with a straight back

'Straight back' has never become the title of one of his radio programmes, but it has always been the philosophy of the professional life and ethical code of conduct of Giancarlo Santalmassi, the historic face and voice of RAI and director of Radio24 from 2005 to 2008, who passed away yesterday at the age of 83. And keeping his back straight created quite a few problems for Santalmassi, starting with his relations with politics, which, as is well known, tends to prefer genuflected journalists to journalists with their backs straight. But so be it, and Santalmassi had gone on his way, putting his extraordinary radio and television skills on the other side of the scales to compensate for the disadvantages of his professional independence.

Moreover, when he appeared in the editorial staff of Radio 24 a few weeks before its launch on 4 October 1999, to many of us he appeared like a Martian, and not so much because of his different age compared to the rest of the editorial staff and presenters selected by the radio station's first director, Elia Zamboni. Santalmassi, in fact, was already a professional monument: he had joined RAI in 1961 and many of us remembered his conduction of the first Tg2 (an American-style conduction, less stiff and more lively, it was said) and of the extraordinary edition on 16 March 1978 at 10 am to announce first the news of the Moro kidnapping. But we all remembered that extraordinary page of journalism that was the three days of uninterrupted live coverage, from 10 to 13 June 1981, to follow the attempts to rescue poor Alfredino Rampi, who had fallen into a well at Vermicino. There is no media scholar in Italy who does not recognise that that was an epoch-making turning point in the way news reporting was done on television compared to the more paludated and detached canons then in force.

It was a breaking point from which there would be no turning back and which Giancarlo, when questioned, summed up as follows: 'It was the moment when television lost its innocence'. His career at RAI continued, moving more and more to the radio medium, thanks also to the esteem of another monument of Italian journalism, Livio Zanetti, who in 1994 entrusted him first with the deputy direction of gr Rai, then with the conduction of an innovative programme such as Zapping (where zapping between the news programmes became as much a syntax as the guests and the line open to the public) and then he was appointed director of Radio Rai. And then, as mentioned, in 1999 our paths crossed, where by ours we mean those of Radio24. From 1999 to 2003 he hosted the radio station's two flagship programmes: in the morning Viva Voce and in the evening Helzappoppin, the latter in clear and deliberate counter-programming with his own creature (Zapping) on air on Rai. And as with his experience at RAI, at Radio 24 Santalmassi continued to insist on the idea of radio as a space for confrontation with the use of an increasingly direct and contemporary language.

A wealth of experience and insight that he tried to pass on to all of us with great humility, and even more so when, from 2005 to 2008, he also took over as director of Radio 24. It is very difficult, in these cases, not to give in to autobiographical memories and it is almost impossible in my case, given that Santalmassi made a bet on me without any guarantee of a result. But limiting my personal memories, I would like to mention just one: Giancarlo was professionally obsessed with the 'radiogenicity' of everything that went on air: not only of the content and the conduction, but also of every minimum sound detail, and I still remember the hours spent in a studio and the technician's squinting eyes in order to find the most appropriate sound of a thunderstorm to make the 10 seconds of the Meteo theme song! But you know Masters are not Masters by chance. Goodbye Giancarlo, we imagine you always free in that ether that in life you travelled as a true protagonist.

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