As of January 1, Italian public broadcaster RAI has decided to end RAI International production destined for abroad. All that will be left is the name and a station that will broadcast programmes produced by RAI’s three domestic networks.
R
AI International was created in 1995 for the expressed purpose of answering to the needs of the Italian TV public outside Italy, in agreement with the Presidenza del Consiglio (presidency of the council). Its objective was that of “developing the presence of the public service in the international radio-TV distribution and to answer to the information needs and services as expressed by the Italian collective abroad.” But after funding cuts of over 70%, the only “public service” broadcasts in 2012 will be a limited number of soccer games.
(Source: corrieretandem.com)
on Dec 16th, 2011 at 23:22
About time too!
The terrible and expensive service provided by Rai International was absolutely overrated and pretty useless, as it was.
Although probably this deathblow was necessary, unfortunately Italians think that the solution to resolve a hard problem (primarily mismanagement) is to eradicate anything, in this case Rai has “sadly” decided to close anything, instead to copy what DW-TV and TV5Monde/RFI do with their radio and television channels.
Anyway few italians will miss this Rai International, the our state broadcaster has never got any interest to provide an adequate external broadcasting service, as desirable. Millions of Italians worldwide and what it should be an important country of European Community, without a voice. Even the bankrupted Greece, still has ERT World and the Voice of Greece.
on Dec 16th, 2011 at 23:25
I was forgetting to tell that the correct name for the “Presidenza del Consiglio dei ministri” is “Presidency of the Council of Ministers”.
on Jan 13th, 2012 at 01:27
This obviously concerns also “Notturno Italiano”, the last remainder of RAI’s international radio service that otherwise, i.e. on shortwave, went away effective 1 Oct 2007. If I understand the constellation right this was originally the traditional overnight service, introduced in 1952, but became a special international thing once Radiouno introduced own night programming, so far carried on FM only.
Now the mediumwave transmitters so far used for “Notturno Italiano” carry throughout the night Radiouno. These were, since the operation of the 1200 kW facility (Santa Palomba in Rome area) on 846 kHz has been banned almost a decade ago, Neaples 657 kHz, the Rome city outlet (6 kW) on 1107 kHz plus 900 kHz from Siziano near Milano. For the latter I doubt that it still runs anything close to the nominal 600 kW. It sounds rather like 100 or even 50 kW only anymore.
on Jan 13th, 2012 at 12:36
Actually it doesn’t. This story, from a Canadian site aimed at Italian expats, was referring specifically to the satellite TV service. I was not even aware that Notturno Italiana still existed, or that it was part of RAI International.