Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent It’s 7:30 a.m. on a sunny May morning in Rome on a side street outside the studios of Italian state broadcaster Rai.
A live audience standing behind metal fencing is watching a lithe group of nuns, one with a mustache, who slowly creep out from a row of white closet doors.
They start dancing, hugging and pirouetting to a ballad belted out by a young Tuscan pop singer. Then the dancers, dressed in Catholic sisters garb, begin playing basketball.
Welcome to “Viva Rai 2!,” Italy’s answer to America’s morning shows. It’s a local ratings phenomenon conceived and conducted by volcanic Sicilian megastar Rosario Fiorello, who is breathing new life into Italian television at a time when doomsayers are sounding the death knell of public TV around the world.
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