Rai News 24 (Italian: Rai News Ventiquattro) is an Italian free-to-air television channel operated by a state-owned public broadcaster RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana. It is the company's all-news television channel, and is known for its 24-hour rolling news service and its live coverage of breaking news.
History
It was launched on 26 April 1999, at 6 am. Until 19 May 2000, the channel broadcast live on weekdays only and re-aired previous recordings during the weekend. On 4 January 2017, the channel launched its own HD feed. Since 25 March 2022, during the Russo-Ukrainian war crisis, the channel started broadcasting the news in the Ukrainian language. In the beginning, Rai News 24 was directed by Roberto Morrione. The channel experimented with solutions that were then unusual in Italy, integrating television, the internet and digital technologies; the choice of multi-screen graphics, designed by Giuseppe Rogolino, was significant, as was the widespread use of connections in video conference with correspondents and experts. In particular, to reduce the number of bits necessary for coding of the signal, the screen was divided into various windows: the window occupied by the television signal occupied just under half the number of total pixels, as the other parts of the screen contained informative texts regarding the exact time, major news headlines, stock exchange and currency indices, the weather forecast, the addresses of the in-depth Internet sites for the various news and the logo of the news or column on air at that moment. In the graphics, three text fields and two videos appeared simultaneously, so as to make the news come up even without listening to the audio, with an architecture based on HTML. Until 19 May 2000, the channel broadcast live from Monday to Friday, offering only re-runs on weekends. From 20 May 2000 onwards, live broadcasts were also extended to the weekends. At the end of 2005, Rai News 24 scored various exclusives on the war in Iraq, informing of the use of weapons such as white phosphorus or napalm (through an investigation by Sigfrido Ranucci) by the US military, and the combat behaviour of some Italian soldiers in Nassiriya. These and other journalistic results have been obtained despite the considerable scarcity of economic and technological resources compared to the other major Rai newspapers (the first budget was only 42 billion lire, of which 10 was only for editorial expenses). The issue recurred several times in the following years. On 10 November 2006, Rai News 24 opened its own official channel on YouTube, with videos taken from the news and programmes aired; the channel was deleted in 2014 due to the end of the collaboration between Rai and YouTube On 25 November 2006, under the authority of the channel's new director, Corradino Mineo, the channel introduced a new logo that omitted the Rai wordmark, used a new font, new initials and a new full-screen graphic design, designed by Giuseppe Rogolino; the branding graphics subsequently undergo a modification by the graphic designer Marco di Cesare. Double conduction was also introduced for some editions of the news. In collaboration with Rai 3, there was also the development of a newscast in Arabic for Rai Med. In the same period, the channel also began to broadcast through digital terrestrial television.
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