La fiction internazionale e la comunicazione televisiva

The article is focused on the birth of a new style in TV series in the United States around the end of the Eighties (the so-called "HBO Style") and discusses their characteristics, narrative plots and features. Furthermore the article depicts the landing of these narrative contents in Italy, facing a backward-looking mediascape with a duopolistic presence of two networks, Rai and Mediaset. New American series greatly contribute to change this blocked system, now challenged by a multinational conglomerate, Sky. Finally the article depicts the shifts from free-to-air television to pay-per-view and then to video on demand.