An average of 10.4 million people were watching the third night of the 2017 Sanremo Music Festival presented by Carlo Conti and Maria De Filippi on Thursday, televised on state broadcaster RAI.
The evening, dedicated to cover songs, garnered 49.7% of total audience.
This was higher than the 47.88% seen on the same evening last year and the highest since 2011, when the long-standing music bonanza conducted by Gianni Morandi attracted 50.9% of those watching television at that time.
At the Ariston Theatre venue in the Ligurian seaside resort, regional governor and political advisor to former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, Giovanni Toti, commented on youth unemployment levels in the country, calling them "intolerable".
At the traditional press conference held on Friday at the Ariston Theater by Conti, Toti noted that it was The National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe.
As many as 15,000 Italians were tortured or killed by Yugoslav communists who occupied the Istrian peninsula during the last two years of the war. Many of the victims were thrown into the narrow mountain gorges during anti-Fascist uprisings in the area and the exact number of victims of these atrocities is unknown, in part because Tito's forces destroyed local population records to cover up their crimes.
"Remembering even here, at the most popular time of our tradition, that piece of history is important to build a future," Toti said. Also taking part in the press conference was Valeria Farinacci, whose career was originally launched at the music festival and who was eliminated from the competition on Thursday evening.
"This year went badly for the women in my round. There were only two out of eight - Marianne Mirage and I - but neither of us made it," she said.
The highest viewing audience on Thursday was at 9:52, when 15.578 million watched the 92-year-old midwife Maria Pollacci go on stage, director of state broadcaster RAI1 Andrea Fabiano said on Thursday. Studio54 Network, the long-standing radio station of the festival, has meanwhile decided this year to leave Sanremo and go to the areas of central Italy hit in the latest earthquakes. For two days, the radio broadcaster - which since 1989 has been near the Ariston Theater in its motorhomes, will be in Camerino, close to the part of the city that was almost entirely razed to the by natural disaster to "be near the people hit", Enzo Di Chiera said.
He added that "we will talk about an Italy that is unfortunately dealing with serious problems and we will give voice to those who need attention."
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