A sector with a turnover of almost one hundred billion euros, which includes 505 companies throughout Italy. There are 629 transmitters, ten «multiplex» dedicated to broadcasting digital techniques and 24,700 frequency installations (about 20,500 analogical ones and 4 thousand digital). This is the estimate of the Italian Communications Ministry on the national broadcasting sector. At the disposal of this varied industry is one of the most modern sectors, which can boast companies that now have better experience thanks to decades of protection of the private analogical broadcasting market which literally exploded in the middle of the Seventies.

Under the guidance of ICE (Italian Institute for Foreign Trade), this same sector is getting ready to set up stall at the thirteenth edition of BroadcastAsia - International Electronic Media Technology Exhibition & Conference (www.broadcast-asia.com), an event that will take place in Singapore from 17 to 20 June 2008. The fair, which Italy will attend with an ICE collective, is the main and most important event in Asia devoted to audio, video, cinematographic and radio broadcasting technologies, with a particular interest in new digital technologies and post-production and related services. The last edition in 2007 saw the participation of 763 exhibitors from over 40 countries, the majority from Asia. However, there were also numerous exhibitors from the European Union (United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany and Holland), from the United States, Australia and Canada. Over half of all the 12,700 visitors, in all 52%, came from outside Asia, thus confirming the fair’s international nature.

One of the most distinctive features of the Italian communications industry is its dynamism: during the years 1986-2005, the communications industry grew from 24.6 to 96.9 billion euros, at a faster pace than Italian gross domestic product for the same period. After 2001, this recovery was helped along by contents which are going through their best period of the last twenty years. The communications industry in Italy is dominated by mobile telecommunications (24.16% of the overall turnover), followed by landline telecommunications (20.85%), computers (20.24%), advertising (9.85%) and television (7.79%).

The investments of the seven free television broadcasters – controlled by Rai, Mediaset, Telecom Italia Media – are estimated at 3 billion euros a year. Over half of this amount is invested by Rai, the public television and radio company. The overall investment of the satellite broadcaster Sky Italia and thematic channels belonging to other publishers is more than 1 billion euros, while that of Mediaset (the main Italian private television group) is about 1.2 billion. Free broadcasters’ investments in original television products benefiting production companies amount to around 780 million euros, divided between fiction (490 million), entertainment (250 million), animation (20 million), documentaries (less than 20 million). To this can be added 120 million euros invested in the production and purchase of Italian cinema.