SHORT TAKES : Italian Pay TV Has Lots of Spice
Italians are all set for their first taste of pay television--a cocktail of X-rated movies, sex therapy and what is billed as an erotic version of candid camera.
Some 70,000 people have written in to say they want to join the “Pay-TV Italian Club”--open to adults only--and buy the decoder needed to receive the broadcasts for $200.
“We won’t be a hard-core TV,” pledged the station’s director, Roberto Artigiani. “You can call it soft erotica if you want,” said the 47-year-old Artigiani. “We’ll tackle sex in an open, intelligent way, without false moralism or propriety.”
His first coded signals are due to go on the air at 1 a.m. one night in mid-April. First, “Perfume of Love”--10 minutes of viewers’ letters. Then a sex therapy session, a game show, a cabaret dominated by strip-tease, and finally a movie, taking viewers to closing time at 3 a.m.
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