International News Presentation: Past and Present

Yes, but presented by someone in uniform from the air force. I quite liked that, the only bit of gravitas you'd see,
the rest was (is still ?) cheap daytime crap, all day, and into primetime.

There are many good things about Italy, TV isn't one of them

For years, many of RAI's weather forecasts were presented by Air Force men in uniform -- making the whole thing look vaguely like something you would expect to see in an old-style South American dictatorship. An example from 1992:



Meanwhile, Hazim is sending us some clips of TVN in Chile (you may know him from tvnewstalk.net, but he has trouble registering here; maybe the mods can help?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir2LiP7_V1g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7cmVch45DM

You only need to look at RAI's 1991 Eurovision Song Contest to see how shambolic their standards were. The pregnant pause at the beginning heralds the start of three hours of Italian 'entertainment' (and it was almost exclusively all in Italian too, ignoring the EBU's requirement to be in English and French, plus a local language if necessary).

I was involved with RAI digitising its archive in the late 90s. I'm trying to recall anything on any of the tapes I saw that wasn't a gameshow.

Most Italian entertainment programs combine elements of game shows, talk shows, comedy sketch shows, and music. These long-form variety programs, which went out of fashion decades ago in most countries, are alive and well in Italy. (As they are in large parts of Latin America. If you've seen Sabado Gigante, that's what a lot of Italian TV looks like.)

Yep. Spain also got in on that act - and some of the really big 'entertainment' shows in the 90s were RAI/TVE co-productions ISTR.

Italy, like France, is 'another place' when it comes to TV... The UK has a LOT more in common with Germany and Scandinavia in TV terms...

Vesti Kalmykia , 2016 Kalmyk-language edition:



The Republic of Kalmykia is a small Russian republic notable for the fact that it is the only area of Europe where the majority of the population practice Buddhism. The Kalmyk people speak a language related to Mongolian.

[/quote] The Republic of Kalmykia is a small Russian republic notable for the fact that it is the only area of Europe where the majority of the population practice Buddhism. The Kalmyk people speak a language related to Mongolian.[/quote]

Not to mention the former President (a.k.a Dictator) of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is obsessed with chess.

RAI Tre, Italy; the Slovenian-language edition of the regional news for Friuli-Venezia Giulia; 2011 (first few minutes & sports segment):



And the Italian version of the regional news from the same year (also incomplete):

The Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 as covered by German TV (ARD):



And French TV (ORTF's First Network) on the same day:

HRT, Croatia, 2016:

DR2, Denmark, 2016:



RTL4, Netherlands, 2003: