Comedian Giorgio Panariello, arriving with singer Marco Masini at the wake held at the Teatro delle Vittorie in Rome, paid tribute to the late television host Pippo Baudo, calling him the “patron saint of variety shows.” Panariello lamented that the genre is unfortunately fading and deserves to be re-evaluated, stating, “It is a form of entertainment for which we hold the copyright.”
“I hope that his passing can turn a spotlight onto variety shows, which are slowly disappearing,” he added. On the subject of a successor, Panariello said there are “many, as he himself said many times, but out of patriotism, I would say Carlo Conti.”
Masini recalled that without Baudo, his hit song ‘Vaffanculo’ would never have been broadcast. “He was the first to clear it for airplay and thus give me the chance to get it to everyone, and for that I will always thank him. It was a great courage that is perhaps missing in songs today.”
“He certainly understood that times were changing, both from the point of view of musical evolution itself and from the point of view of the market, the system, and dissemination,” Masini continued. “He had foreseen the transition from analog to digital. This means having a 360-degree vision of the past, the present, and what the future will be.”
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