1961 in Italian television

• 6 January - Tony Dallara wins Canzonissima with Romantica; the year before, the singer had won the Sanremo Festival with the same song.
• 18 January – The liberal Novello Papafava [it] and the Christian Democrat Ettore Bernabei are nominated, respectively, for the positions of President and General Director of RAI. Bernabei, a faithful follower of Amintore Fanfani, will be the true master of the estate for thirteen years. At the beginning, his management is inspired to a line of prudent opening, softening the censure and giving space also to professionals (such as Enzo Biagi and Ugo Gregoretti) not aligned with the DC.^[1]
• 6 February - The duo Luciano Tajoli and Betty Curtis wins the Sanremo Music Festival with Al di là.^[2] However, the contest, presented by Giuliana Calandra, is memorable moreover for the debut of many singers of the youngest generation, “howlers” or singer-songwriters. Adriano Celentano, runner up with 24.000 baci, arouses scandal for having turned the back to the audience in his performance.^[3]
• 17 March: centenary of the Unification of Italy. RAI celebrates the event broadcasting, beyond the official ceremonies, Va' pensiero, a recital of lyric arias and texts read by actors, care of Marco Visconti and directed by Anton Giulio Majano.^[4]
• 14 April: first connection between RAI and OIRT; the Italian television broadcasts, live from Moscow, the celebrations to Juri Gagarin after the Vostok 1 mission.^[4]
• 11 June: Arnaldo Pambianco wins the Giro d'Italia (the "Centenary tour"). For the first time, RAI covered the event in full.^[4]
• September: RAI begins the survey of audience and satisfaction ratings, with the method of random telephone interviews; the most watched show of 1961 is Studio Uno, with 13,600,000 viewers.^[5]
• 1 October - The socialist Enzo Biagi becomes director of the TV news; he renews the program, giving less space to internal politics and officialdom and more to chronicle and news from the world. This new deal arouses harsh polemics by the right-wing. After a year, Biagi resigns.^[6]
• 4 November – The Second channel begins broadcasting. This is the schedule of the first day.^[7]

The new channel airs two hours by day (since 9 PM) and is received only by a half of the Italian population.^[1]

• 12 November. In the Council of ministers, Guido Gonella and Mario Scelba, exponents of the most conservative wing of DC, attack fiercely the variety shows, Enzo Biagi's TV journal and the Political tribune (see below). They accuse RAI of having “put Togliatti and the ballerinas in the Italian families’ heart.”^[8] 
• On “Il Verri”, the essay Mike Bongiorno’s phenomenology, by Umberto Eco, is published.^[9] The writing, despite its playful tone, is one of the first serious analyses of television as a social phenomenon.