Florence, 3 January 2023 – Exactly 70 years ago, on 3 January 1954, Rai broadcasts began. It was 11am on a Sunday morning when Fulvia Colombo announced the beginning of this adventure with these exact words: “RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana begins its regular television broadcast service today”. They were barely tuned in to follow the event 15 thousand televisions throughout Italyand since few could afford to have one at home, most were found in bars. The television schedule was short: it started with the inauguration of the RAI offices in Milan, Rome and Turin, then moved on to the ‘Arrivals and Departures’ program hosted by a young Mike Bongiornospace for sport in the afternoon with trotting and football, and then the cinema with ‘The miseries of Mr Travet’ by Mario Soldati with Gino Cervi and Alberto Sordi. The first news broadcast was broadcast at 8.45pm and was followed by a live broadcast of ‘L’osteria della posta’ by Carlo Goldoni, with Leonardo Cortese and Isa Barzizza starring on stage. The broadcasts ended at 11pm, when for the first time the first RAI monoscope dominated the screen. If the name Radio Audizioni Italiane SpA had taken over from EIAR in 1944, three months after that 3 January it changed to Radio Televisione Italiana. The television offer expanded in a short time, the Sanremo Festivalin November 1955 it was then the turn of the first drama, Little Women, and a quiz destined to go down in history together with its presenter, “Leave or double?” by Mike Bongiorno. And when, in December 1958, the audience of taxpayers who paid the license fee crossed the milestone of the millionth subscriber, RAI celebrated with a special broadcast. A curiosity of no small importance: the first televisions of the time, strictly in black and white, they cost more than five times the salary monthly average of a worker. Born today Sergio Leone born on 3 January 1929 in Rome. He passed away on April 30, 1989, while he was preparing the colossal which would ideally open a new season of his work, the story of the siege of Leningrad which he had been trying to revive for years. He was 18 years old when he got a small part in “Bicycle Thieves” but the world dreamed of by the young Leone already had the boundless confines of the West, on the Roman meadows he saw Tom Mix riding and the passion for an epic cinema flowed in his blood and very far from the neorealism, although attention to reality remains a moral obligation for him. After working on the sets of “Quo vadis?” and “Ben Hur” will assist Mario Bonnard as second unit director in “The Last Days of Pompeii.” It was the decisive step and two years later, in 1961, he was offered the direction of a colossal film to be shot with a low budget and actors found at the last moment. The rest is cinema history. He said: “Life is a one-way highway, impossible to reverse or go back, it would be crazy to speed up.”
2024-01-03 04:01:11
#Rai #born #January #years
