Rai Italia is the international

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television service of Rai Internazionale, a subsidiary of RAI,

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's public national broadcaster. Rai Italia operates a television network that broadcasts around the world via 3 localized feeds. Programming features a mix of news, discussion-based programs, drama and documentaries as well as sports coverage including 4 live games per week from Italy's top football league,

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. From 1996 to 2013, Glauco Benigni is Head of the Press International Office and Head of Promotion and Development of RAI International worldwide.

Audience

Rai Italia is targeted at Italian

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s, foreign citizens of Italian descent, and non-Italians interested in

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and

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; as such the network features a mix of the best programming from Rai as well as original programming created especially for this channel. Rai Italia started international television broadcasting on

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1992 as Rai International, Rai Italia has worked under an agreement with the Italian government to develop the presence of public service in international radio and television broadcasting. Rai Italia also strives to meet the demands for information and services from Italian communities abroad. Rai Italia broadcasts three television channels, via satellite, which vary according to the different geographical targets. No service is available for

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as Rai's domestic channels are widely available free-to-air in this region. Rai Italia has organized the satellite service into 4 zones with each having a different localized schedule: *Rai Italia America – Broadcasts to

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*Rai Italia Asia – Broadcasts to

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*Rai Italia Australia – Broadcasts to Australia *Rai Italia Africa – Broadcasts to

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

In Europe, Rai Italia has broadcast for a short period of timesharing with Rai Med (

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entertainment,

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), but this broadcast has ended.

Controversy in Canada

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, Rai Italia's programming was originally seen on Telelatino, a Canadian licensed channel launched in 1984 and currently, majority owned by Corus together with three prominent Italian-Canadians. Telelatino ( or "TLN") was launched over a decade before an RAI international TV channel ever existed. TLN had provided a level of availability and variety of Italian domestic and foreign programming to Canadians that was unsurpassed anywhere outside Italy. However, in 2003, RAI pulled the Rai International programming from Telelatino and, with the help of

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(which itself owns several multicultural stations in

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under the

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system), petitioned the

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(CRTC) to allow Rai Italia to be broadcast in Canada. Although the Italian community in Montreal was in favour of admitting Rai International into the Canadian media marketplace, the Italian community in Toronto was divided since some believed that it was a ploy by the then Prime Minister

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to gain influence over Canadian Italian-language media. This theory may have been advanced by Telelatino's primary carriage of programming from Berlusconi-controlled

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after RAI's Canadian launch. Originally, the CRTC denied RAI's application, because RAI had improperly denied supply of programming to TLN's Canadian viewers and that RAI's attempt to enter Canada on an unrestricted basis without any Canadian programming and financial obligations would be

unfair competition Unfair may refer to: * Double Taz and Double LeBron James in multiverses '' fair''; unfairness or injustice * ''Unfair'' (drama), Japanese television series * '' Unfair: The Movie'' * Unfair (song), a song by South Korean boy group EXO