ROME — Italian civil protection authorities have extended a rolling news broadcast indefinitely and dispatched field teams across the country to knock on every door and confirm that citizens are still watching, declaring that the program cannot end until the last viewer has been personally located and accounted for.
The operation, named «Total Audience,» has already reassigned municipal employees in every province to door-to-door verification duty. Each team carries a printed schedule of the broadcast and a checklist of questions: whether the resident has watched in the past hour, whether the volume was audible from the street, and whether any neighbor has expressed doubt about the program's necessity.
«We cannot switch off a broadcast that someone, somewhere, might still be watching,» a civil protection coordinator said. «So we will keep it on until we have physically confirmed that no such person exists. We estimate this will take until the spring, possibly longer if we find enthusiastic viewers.»
Regional governors have begun competing for the highest confirmed viewership rate, and several have introduced mandatory viewing hours between 6 and 9 in the evening, enforced by the same teams that check doorbells. A new uniform has been issued: a reflective vest bearing the broadcast's logo and the words «Viewer Verification.»
By Thursday, the town of Roccaraso had built a viewing pavilion with seating for the entire population, and the mayor had begun personally reading the evening bulletin aloud to anyone who missed it. The broadcast itself has not stopped since the operation began, and officials say it will not stop until the last door in Italy has been knocked on.