Rudy Buttignol (born June 18, 1951) is a Canadian television network executive and entrepreneur. Buttignol was the president and CEO of British Columbia's Knowledge Network, BC's public broadcaster, from 2007 until June 2022. He was also president of Canadian subscription television channel BBC Kids from 2011 until it ceased operations in 2018. In 2022, following a highly publicized diversity audit of the Knowledge Network, Buttignol was dismissed from his position as president and CEO. Early life Rudy Buttignol was born in 1951 in Pordenone, Italy to Nelda (Caterina) and Marino Buttignol. In 1955 at the age of four, Buttignol and his mother boarded the MS Vulcania and immigrated to Canada via Pier 21 in Halifax. In Toronto, they were reunited with Marino Buttignol, who had immigrated in 1954 to work for Canadian National Railway laying rail in northern Alberta. Buttignol was raised and educated in Toronto. From 1971 to 1975, he attended York University, Faculty of Fine Arts, where he studied film under James Beveridge, Louis de Rochemont 111 and Terence Macartney-Filgate. Career Buttignol's career spans more than four decades. At the beginning of his career, he worked as an independent producer, director, writer and editor of documentary and children's programs, and later as a commissioning editor, television programmer, and broadcast executive. He has been called "Canadian broadcasting and documentary guru" and "friend of the auteur in Canada and abroad". Buttignol is acknowledged for his roles developing Canadian cultural policy related to documentary film funding and broadcasting and advancing the creative documentary genre in Canada and on the world stage. Rudy Buttignol originated the idea behind the 2014 television series Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH. He stressed the distinction between the genre of the series, which is a documentary, and that of reality-based entertainment. From 1975 to 1993, Buttignol worked as an independent filmmaker creating film and video works. His early documentaries were about an Italian dairy (The Dairy (1977), a Canadian artist (Jack Bush (1979), a pop history of neon lights (Neon, an Electric Memoir (1984), an Apollo-era astronaut who became an artist (Allan Bean: Art Off This Earth (1990), and the early history of the Russian space program (Soviet Space: The Secret Designer (1992). In 1993, Buttignol began work as a public broadcaster when he joined TVOntario as commissioning editor and creative head of independent production. From 2000 to 2006, he was TVOntario's creative head of