Interview with Emidio Frattaroli, founder, publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the online audio and video news daily AV Magazine (avmagazine.it)

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Could you briefly introduce your magazine and its peculiarities?AV Magazine is a new online daily news outlet focusing on consumer electronics for audio, video, and home theater, dedicated to consumers without specific technical training as well as to demanding enthusiasts and industry professionals. On AV Magazine’s pages, we publish news, articles, guides, technical insights, and reports from the most important industry fairs. The peculiarity of our editorial reality is represented by a sophisticated analysis laboratory that we use to quantify the most important aspects of the products tested. For example, in AV Magazine we measure brightness, contrast ratio, and color accuracy of a display or a video projector, as well as the frequency response and distortion of an amplifier or a loudspeaker. Alongside the magazine, there is a community of over 11,000 registered users who can comment on every single piece of content published in the magazine, constituting the largest discussion forum in the sector in Italy.How does the Italian consumer audio and video electronics market present itself, and what are the prospects?The deep crisis that the market has gone through in the last four years has not yet been fully overcome. The high fidelity audio sector continues to face the greatest problems, with market shares unable to go beyond the niche of demanding enthusiasts. In the video sector, the LCD and plasma display sectors continue to post staggering numbers, driven by a rapid reduction in prices and a constant increase in overall quality. The positive wave, which pushes consumers to replace old cathode ray tube TVs with newer models, is growing more and more and will be further accelerated by the arrival of the new high definition media Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD. Another rapidly growing sector is digital photography, especially concerning the high-end products, a situation highlighted by the entry of numerous players into a market that until yesterday was dominated by few producers traditionally linked to analog photography.What relationship do Italian companies have with the audio and video market?In the last twenty years, the historic “Made in Italy” brands related to the video sector have almost entirely disappeared. However, in Italy there are still small production realities linked to mid-to-high-end TV and video projection products. The audio sector is different; small Italian companies produce loudspeakers, amplifiers, and audio sources of the highest quality in the top market segment, a sector in which technological research, experience, and the attention to detail of Italian products enjoy significant success worldwide. Another particular sector is distribution. There are very few Italian branches of large companies, limited to a few representatives of the Japanese giants. Foreign manufacturers prefer to entrust the distribution of their products to small companies that can count on a well-established sales network. Regarding the sales channel, after the great selection that took place in the last three years, specialized stores continue to be the reference in the high-end market segment, while for the middle and lower ranges there is a clear dominance by large-scale retail, with specialized e-commerce beginning to take its first real steps.What are the sector’s innovations this year?All the main innovations of the year revolve around high definition: the new television broadcast standard with resolution five times that of terrestrial digital TV and the DVD we have long been used to. Since the end of May, the Sky group has been broadcasting high-definition channels via satellite also in Italian. Rai has been conducting very interesting experiments for some time, culminating in the terrestrial digital transmission of high-definition signals during the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics. By the last quarter, we also expect the arrival in Italy of the high-definition media of the future: Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD, which have just been released in Japan and the United States and are engaged in a battle reminiscent of the Betamax and VHS recording system conflict. To appreciate high definition, new displays and video projectors compatible with the new signal transmission standard are also necessary. Along with high definition come evolutions of the Dolby Digital and DTS multichannel encoding systems that nonetheless guarantee compatibility with current amplifiers and decoders already on the market for some years.What is the market trend?The market at an international level is clearly recovering, especially in the United States, a country that has already shown encouraging signs since 2003. In Italy, we are still behind, but the start of high-definition TV and the imminent arrival of the optical media Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD in Europe as well put even the most skeptical analysts in a good mood. In this sector, the leading role will be played by LCD and plasma TVs, especially between the end of 2006 and during 2007, a period when a greater number of displays with even larger dimensions and resolutions over two megapixels (1920×1080 pixels) will be available. Another positive impulse could come from terrestrial digital, but only if the Government manages to impose on manufacturers the sale of TVs with an integrated digital tuner. Only in this way will it be possible to accelerate the switch-off of analog signals to free up numerous frequencies that can be used for channels and services with significantly higher quality. High-definition TV could also be transmitted via Digital Terrestrial, but only when a sufficient number of frequencies will be available.How did the last year go and what goals are foreseen for the sector?AV Magazine is growing fast and steadily, both in terms of the number of readers and pages viewed, as well as the interest our publication continues to generate among the companies in the sector traditionally linked to communication through print media. AV Magazine is experiencing with about a five-year delay what has happened to online editorial realities in the ITC sector. In this field AV Magazine is a true pioneer: our direct online competitors limit themselves to reduced versions of the print monthly magazines. In the past year, the number of page views has more than tripled alongside unique readers exceeding 100,000 units since January 2006. During the last quarter of the year, our goal is to consolidate our editorial leadership with more than 15,000 registered users overall, surpassing 5 million page views and 200,000 unique readers per month. To complement our editorial successes, we have strengthened human resources for the management and sale of advertising spaces, with particular care to consulting and the production of turnkey creativity for all entrepreneurial realities approaching the online publishing sector for the first time. RESERVED REPRODUCTION