73.8% Italians average or "poor" media consumers
14.8% "omnivores"
9.1% "marginal" users
2.3% "pioneers"

Italians love their television, a Censis study showed, noting a large digital and cultural divide in the country’s media use. Of those with an average or poor media ‘diet,’ television and radio are the prime sources of information, with text messages to cell phones making a strong showing.
This largest group still shies away from using the Internet for information — only around the heaviest media users, around 17% of the total polled, turned to new technologies for information. Of marginal users, 99% percent watch only television (63% of them watch news programs) and some 70% of these say they "aren’t capable" of using computers or the Internet.

One of Italy’s largest cemeteries has installed computer information points to help relatives locate beloved ones. The initiative, unveiled in Milan last week, will be put to the test when Italians traditionally pay their respects on All Saints and All Soul’s days, Nov.1- 2.

Milan’s main cemetery is, in fact, a city within a city: a kilometer long and almost as wide, it houses the remains of 550,00 thousand people. The tangle of monuments and tombstones in the cemetery inaugurated in 1885 meant that lines at the information window kept people waiting at least 20 minutes.

The Maggiore cemetery now has four information booths which allow visitors to look up names on a data base and print out a map as well as other information about the place of burial.

"It’s a real revolution," said head of the city’s funeral services Giulio Gallera. "Up until now the defunct were kept in endless lists, it was difficult to trace any kind of information."

The city government has more prosaic reasons for updating the system, like keeping tabs on leases. Due to the confusing state of paper archives, officials didn’t know when time was up for the niches (30-year leases) or family tombs (90-year leases) — estimates for loss of income to the cemetery are about 750,000 euro. An information booth was also installed at the Greco cemetery, plans are to extend the computerized system to the city’s other five cemeteries, cataloguing some 471,000 total remains.

The male heirs of the House Savoy have been allowed back into Italy following a 56-year exile, but a small town named after the royal family is fighting to get its old name back.
The town of Salvia (in the southern Italian province of Potenza) was forced to change its name to Savoia di Lucania from after local cook Giovanni Passannante, at the time working in Naples, tried to assassinate King Umberto I in 1878.

As part of reparations for the incident, in which the king was superfically wounded, the town’s name was changed from Salvia (the Italian word for sage, plentiful in the surrounding hills) to one that underlined allegiance to the monarchy.

"The name belongs to us, it is in the souls of the people who live here," mayor Rosa Riccardi told zoomata. "There is no particular link to the Savoy’s coming back to Italy. We just want our name back."

The town of 1,200 residents became news during the media feeding frenzy that came after the Italian parliament made constitutional changes in July to allow the return of the Savoia, as the family is known in Italian. Male heirs of the House of Savoy were banished from Italy in 1948 after collaborating with Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and fleeing Rome when the regime caved in.

Despite having 124 years to get used to it, locals have always resented the name change — and have continued calling themselves "salviani" in honor of the original name. The pro-salvia committee, formed in 1986, has been busy petitioning to get the name changed and bring home the remains of Passannante.

The brain and skull of the anarchist, tortured until he was eventually sent to an institute for the criminally insane, were formerly on display in the Rome’s Criminology Museum. In a significant victory for the salviani, Justice Minister Oliviero Diliberto decreed in 1999 that Passannante could be buried in his home town. Riccardi said remains of the town’s most controversial former resident will be put in a memorial, once space is made in the city center.

Related resources:
Salute! Food, wine & travel in Southern Italy
More on the unexplored regions of the Bel Paese…

http://digilander.libero.it/lucania0/savoia/indice.htm
Take a look at Savoia di Lucania…

A new advertising campaign is attempting to convince Italians that buying fakes isn’t ‘cool.’

The cartoons, a scheme invented by Universal records, feature bespectacled Rocco Tarocco who loses his girlfriend after giving her a pirate CD for her birthday, “You’re such a loser,” she whines. “We’re through!”

Over the last 10 years, the market for counterfeit goods in Italy has soared by 1,300%, according to government data. The boom in fakes, colloquially known as "tarocco", "fasullo" or "patacca," over the last decade can in part be attributed to the increase in "sales force," mostly foreigners who work as street vendors in big cities and resort areas.

Compact discs are an increasing chunk of faked goods — which include computer equipment, mechanical parts and even medicines — over 27,000 were sequestered in one police raid this summer. Hard to say whether the campaign will have much impact on Italian buying habits. Consumers groups have complained that the high prices of CDs in Italy , new releases cost around 17 euro, make the pirate market such a popular one. The Rocco Tarocco campaign publicizes a special selection of CDs at lower prices, but does not include the latest hits. Italy is comes in third worldwide , after China and Korea, profiting between 3-5 million euro in the flowering fake market.

http://universalmusic.it/web/catalogo
See Rocco in action — download cartoons with his girlfriend

For the first time, two men will be legally joined as a couple in Italy. On Oct. 21, Alessio De Giorgi and Christian Panicucci who describe themselves as “two husbands” will stand before the French consul in Rome to sign a Civil Solidarity Pact (PACS).

The law, signed by French parliament in 1999, allows registered couples to file joint tax returns, collect pension, inheritance and shorten waiting times for residency permits for foreign partners. Panicucci has dual citizenship, enabling the couple to join with a PACS. There were no immediate comments from the Vatican, which has strongly opposed same-sex unions and laws that protect unmarried couples who live together.

“My mother panicked a bit at first,” said De Giorgi, 31, president of activist group Arci-Gay Tuscany and director of portal www.gay.it “They’ve known for 15 years that I’m gay, but it’s one thing to know it and quite another to let the whole country know.”

The couple has decided celebrate with the accouterments of a traditional Italian wedding — invitations, a gift registry, a cake (with a specially-made figure of two grooms crowning the top) and the reception. “We wanted a traditional wedding,” said De Giorgi who has been with partner Panicucci for 10 years. “Though we have decided to leave out wedding favors and the sugared almonds, it seemed a bit much.” The same holds true for the antiquated Italian saying of “best wishes and male children.”

Related resources:
Abbondanza! Planning an Italian Wedding

30 million (circa) soccer fans
35% are women
6% have a university degree
27 million (circa) "irritated/indifferent" to soccer

Italians "swear loyalty" to a soccer team at around age 6 and by age 8 there’s little changing sides — they are faithful to the team for life. A revealing study of the national sport, conducted by AC Nielsen of 9,100 Italians between from ages 6 and up, predicts soccer clubs will be scrambling for grade-school supporters with more and more marketing aimed at children.

Italy’s favorite team, with fans across geographical and age lines, is undoubtedly Juventus from Turin with some 29% of total supporters. Everyone likes to back a winner — with 26 championships in their belt, Juventus dwarfs the number of fans for other teams — coming in second and third with about half the number of fans are the two Milan teams, Inter followed closely by Milan. Teams from Southern Italy trail behind — Naples has around 2.5 million fans and Roman teams Roma and Lazio check in at 1.7 million and 985,000 fans respectively.

Not all Italians are interested in soccer, however. While around half the population consider themselves soccer fans, an almost equal number could care less — 14 million are indifferent to the sport and 13.3 million are annoyed by it.

Related resources:
www.zoomata.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=592
Soccer-inspired vocab — how it permeates every day Italian life…

10 million Italians use alternative cures
23.7% of these use homeopathy
74.4% Italians want these cures ‘legitimized’ by health care system

Visitors to Italian pharmacies have perhaps noticed the herbal cures and Bach flower remedies along side the aspirin and cough syrup — and over the last two years lobbyists have been trying give patients who prefer alternative medicines the right to do so with government money.
However, current health minister Girolamo Sirchia, while promising to avoid cuts in national expenditures for medicine, is one of the most skeptical opponents: "Homeopathic cures will be paid by the National system only when safety and effectiveness can be demonstrated."
His stern view hasn’t discouraged some Italians from using these age-old remedies on children: 8.9% of them between the ages of 3-5 were treated with homeopathic methods.

Hundreds of locals and tourists staged a sit-in at the house used in the film ‘Il Postino’ to save it from becoming a restaurant.

The pristine beauty of Salina, one of the Aeolian islands, was the setting for the Oscar-winning 1994 film about the friendship between exiled poet Pablo Neruda and his postman. The letter carrier with a romantic bent was played by comic actor Massimo Troisi, who postponed heart surgery to make the film and died of a heart attack the day after filming finished.

The island, also used in Nanni Moretti’s "Caro Diario," has become a place of pilgrimage for Troisi’s fans. The uproar after plans were unveiled to raze the humble house and use the surrounding areas for a restaurant/hotel complex mobilized efforts from national environmental groups Legambiente, WWF and Italia Nostra. For the moment, the protest seems to have convinced owner Pippo Cafarella not to sell the property.

Related resources:
Relive the magic of Il Postino with the DVD or with the trailer…

3.3% Italians use tranquilizers/sedatives
40.5% of women use tranquilizers/sedatives
30% of men use tranquilizers/sedatives
39% of residents in Northern Italy use them

More statistics erode the myth of happy-go-lucky Italians: according to ISTAT data, 1.9 million residents of the Bel Paese currently use tranquilizers or sedatives to help cope with life. These figures put them ahead of American counterparts — according to NIH data, about 1.3 million Americans regularly use these prescription drugs. Not surprisingly, in Italy the harried pace of life in Northern cities increases anxiety-controlling drug use, about 10% higher than for those living in Southern areas.