Why Does RAI Always Show Historical Movies?

It's Sunday. We call it "Italian Day" in our house, because our local Comcast cable provider broadcasts six straight hours of RAInternational programming direct from Italy. 7:00 am to 1:00 pm every Sunday I can immerse myself in Italian language, culture, cuisine, and whatever else they dig up to show us Italy-hungry Americans.
We discovered this broadcast in 2001, so we've been making Sunday morning Italian television a high priority in our household for a while, and I have observed several trends in what they choose to show to the American audience.
The trend that forces my analysis is that, when RAInternational includes a film in their programming, it is almost always historical, dark, and depressing. Sure, every once in a while they'll include a light-hearted soap like "Capri" or a cute mini-series like "Il Padre Quasi Perfetto". But, the rule is that they choose to show sad movies, often taking place around either the time of the unification of Italy or the time of WWII.
If RAInternational seeks to broaden its American audience (not sure that they are, but let's just assume that they as a company are capitalistic in nature), why all the sturm and drang?
Trying to be completely fair about it, I have to wonder if it is an attempt to keep the memory of Italy's hardship of the last 150 years fresh in the minds of Italy's expatriates and other interested parties. Is it possible that Italians and Italian-Americans are also hard-wired to appreciate hardship movies? I really don't know.
As a student of Italy, I have a working knowledge of the main events that the country has gone through to arrive at today. I'm not sure I need to watch actors recreate that horror and misery of it week after week to "appreciate it more". As a result, I typically use movie time to get other things done around the house.
Wish there was someone I could ask to find out what about this type movie is so important to broadcast, at the risk of depressing their viewers each week.