Rai 1

Early years The first television channel receivable in Italy started its experimental broadcasts in 1934. After the interruption caused by the Second World War, it was reinstated in 1949 from Triennale di Milano and for its presentation, Corrado Mantoni was selected, already noted for his radio work and especially for the announcement of the end of the conflict. Its regular broadcasts started at 11am on Sunday, January 3, 1954. Initially, the channel had no official name, because it was directly identified as Rai TV, which was the name of the company. {{blockquote|text= Rai – Italian Radiotelevision starts its regular television broadcasting service today. The first set of programming for Rai 1 was almost completely educational with no advertising, except for the popular Carosello. Early shows were meant to teach a common language to a country torn apart by World War II. Shows like Non è mai troppo tardi... were simply shot in a classroom setting and meant to help with reconstruction. While televisions were not widely available nor affordable, those who could spend the money on them became community leaders and often invited the neighbourhood to visit. Bars and cafés turned from places where men would meet to argue or play cards into miniature cinemas where arguments over what show to watch would break out. Women and children were also more accepted inside the bars due to the lack of men post-war and their need to enter working society. Churches also bought televisions are a means of drawing people to spend time as part of those communities. The Sanremo Music Festival, until then broadcast exclusively on radio, began television broadcasts in 1955, and since 1956 (though for a few years seen on other networks of the corporation), it carried the Eurovision Song Contest, which was derived from Sanremo. 1960s In the 1960s, with the advent of the economic boom, television, up until then a luxury item, turned into a mass object. On 4 November 1961, Rai launched its second network (Secondo Programma, the current Rai 2) while the existing Rai channel was renamed Programma Nazionale. Rai reforms The Rai reforms of 1975 introduced new norms related to the television reform: among other things, control of the public service passed from the Government to Parliament, cable broadcasts were regulated (thus encouraging the creation of local private TV) and each channel was assigned its own management. Telegiornale, which until then was a single unit that produced bulletins for both networks, was divided into two different newspapers: TG1 for the first channel and TG2 for the second. The first news programs under the new names were broadcast starting from 15 March 1976. On 5 April 1976, the National Program took on the name Rete 1 (Network 1). The reform also provided for the establishment of the role of network director, guarantor figure for the contents broadcast by the channel, as well as that of the news director; the first directors of Rete 1 and TG1 were respectively Mimmo Scarano and Emilio Rossi, both Christian Democrats, appointed on 2 December 1975. In 1977, the strand ended after a 20-year run; in the same year, Rai, after six years of trying, started producing its own programs in color, giving birth to the Italian neotelevisione period. 1980s After losing its television monopoly at a local scale in the previous decades, Rai lost it at a national scale; in 1980 the broadcasts of Canale 5 (owned by Fininvest of Milanese publisher Silvio Berlusconi) began, and in 1982, those of the Italia 1 (owned by Rusconi) and Rete 4 (owned by Mondadori) began. Shortly after the launch of Rete 4, the three public channels changed names: on 2 October 1983, the three channels removed the word "Rete", replacing it with the current "Rai". In the same year, the logos for the three networks were created: Rai 1 was represented by a blue sphere. The name change occurred to prevent Rete 4 from being mistaken for a RAI channel. By early 1988, some 14 million viewers watched TG1, with the vast majority of which remaining with the channel after the main edition ended. 2000s In 2002, Fabrizio Del Noce, akin to Forza Italia, became the channel's director. == High-definition feed ==