Media: Publishing brands

The joy of knowledge,from history and medicine to technology and sport.

From Thursday 16 December 2010, Italia 1 will broadcast in prime time “Focus Uno”, a programme made in conjunction with the popular science monthly Focus, published by Gruner+Jahr/Mondadori and edited by Sandro Boeri, which is aimed at those who want to discover and know more about the world we live in.

Italy’s most widely-read magazine makes its first move into television with a new and revolutionary programme that deals with a huge range of interesting issues, including technology, science, history, sport, nature, health, sex, the animal kingdom and much else. An endless and fascinating overview made with reportage, first-hand accounts, astounding internationally produced documentaries and exclusive documents.

There will also be a large number of features produced in-house dedicated to the most extravagant and amusing curiosities.

Presented by Giulio Golia, “Focus Uno” is a new format that maintains the popular and authoritative style of the magazine Focus, and follows the same editorial line: to inform, discover, ask daring questions, provide comprehensible answers, and broaden knowledge while also being entertaining.

From puncturing myths about sex, to the most bizarre deaths explained from a scientific point of view; from unexamined aspects of human behaviour that we take for granted, to the most innovative and original aspects of the world of insects; from the infinite range of unexplained phenomena, to metropolitan legends about the food that we eat and our daily lives, to unique and extraordinarily spectacular natural events; and from the most innovative and creative proposals from the world of renewable energy, to extraordinary images from the world of animals and their natural habitat.

As well as documentaries on the most surprising and varied subjects – personality disorders, lightning, space as seen from a satellite, hyper-technological cars – and features on the new frontiers in the prevention and most recent developments in medicine and pharmacology.

So, don’t forget to tune in from Thursday 16 December 2010 to Italia 1 in prima time for four episodes of “Focus Uno”.

Focus Uno is a programme by YAM112003, produced in association with the popular science magazine Focus for ITALIA 1. Editorial supervision for features of a medical-scientific nature is provided by Intermedia.

R101 is changing its skin and from today will focus even more on the concept of “Adult Contemporary Radio”, a radio station designed and produced for a target in the 25-54 year-old age range.

New positioning and stationality

The new positioning of R101, run since September by station manager Guido Monti, will initially involve the focusing and implementation of the playlist.

The aim of the new R101 is to create an elaborate and well-balanced mix tailored to this specific target, which came to adulthood with the best music ever and consequently will not settle for anything less, while also wanting to experience and enjoy to the full the life and music of today.

“I think that guaranteeing quality music that is able to deeply touch the emotions is just the first step of a long path in which we aim to involve the audience, by betting on less rationality and a bigger emotional impact,” declared Guido Monti.

“A relationship that encourages the listener’s engagement, leaving space for the imagination and the evocation of “personal worlds”, underlined Monti.

“In competitive context like we are in today,” he continued, “innovation – even if it may seem paradoxical – means returning to a concentration on the element that gave birth to commercial radio: music. Together with the efforts of the whole team, imagination and, above all, passion and enthusiasm, we are moving towards the objective of serving the audience, day by day.

Of course, this is just the first of a series of new things that, from January, will also involve the team of presenters …stay tuned!” concluded Guido Monti.

The new playlist

Alongside a mix of national and international hits from the 80s to the present, R101 will offer its listeners regular doses of the pop and disco music of the 70s, as well as plenty of dance and pop rock.

With regard to the hits of the present, R101 will highlight only quality tracks that are destined to become memorable over the years.

R101’s musical offering will “sound different”, thanks to greater variety in the playlist, which will increasingly give a sense of a more emotional station, playing a bigger range of tracks while also constantly remaining in harmony with the state of mind of the audience.

A new Web Radio dedicated to the ’70s

The new musical direction of R101 continues also online, with the addition of a new web radio dedicated to the Sounds of the ’70s: a world of pop and disco featuring the biggest hits from the period, from Donna Summer to the Bee-Gees, and from Gloria Gaynor to Abba.

The new web channel is part of the growth of the R101 site, which has seen a significant increase in its audience and contacts, reaching in a short time a total of more than 200,000 visitors.

The new Donnamoderna.com community is now bigger and has opened its doors on new horizons: from today it is even easier to share and keep up to date with ad hoc advice about all sorts of things and to create your own blog, publish photographs and videos, chat and take part in forum discussions and write private messages to your contacts.

All this has been made possible thanks to an upgrade in the functionality and a simplification of the interface: with a clean and clear layout that highlights the issues of the day and the topics to be discussed in the forums and in the chatrooms, and the immediate identification of the other members of the community with whom you can make friends and exchange ideas and opinions. Also: users can easily update their profile, inform other members about what they’re doing and any other things of interest.

The community content, which is immediately recognisable on the homepage, ranges from fashion to health; gossip to psychology, and from beauty to the world of mothers. And of course ample space is given to the expert opinions: whether they are wedding planners, psychologists or fashion assistants, always careful not to disappoint the curiosity and expectations of everyone.

Donnamoderna.com met with a group of bloggers who were given a preview of the beta community. Reactions and feedback were positive and constructive: “I think that the new Donnamoderna.com community gives one the freedom to express one’s own personality and style thanks to tools that are simple, clear and easy to use,” said Sara Dania, the blogging mother from www.smamma.net. Emma Tracanella, the blogger of 365.caramellamenta.net, claimed that: “The new community is intuitive, easy and gave me all the news and allowed me to satisfy my curiosity about a range of things.”

The high level of appreciation among users of the site can also be seen from audience figures that continue to confirm Donnamoderna.com as the leader among Italian sites for women with a monthly average of 3,100,000 unique users and 40 million page views (source: Nielsen Site Census, October 2010).

There has also been a positive response from the world of social media with more than 92,000 fans on Facebook and more than 10,000 followers on Twitter.

For the first time the Gialappa’s Band will comment live also on R101 everything going on inside the Big Brother 11 house, presented by Alessia Marcuzzi.

Every Monday from 9 pm until April 2011 the members of the legendary trio (otherwise known as Giorgio Gherarducci, Marco Santin and Carlo Taranto) will provide an exclusive radio report on R101 and at the same time on Mediaset Premium Extra 1 of everything that happens during the live coverage of the reality show, with comments and asides on the most amusing contestants.

The live format for the Gialappa’s Band has been used in the past for matches involving the Italian national team and for the Sanremo Festival, though never for a reality show lasting around 4 hours.

After just three episodes of Big Brother 11, a sort of Gialappa-mania has already exploded online. The audience will be able to follow the trio on different ways. On Mediaset Premium Extra 1, which also exploits supplementary TV cameras, on the radio on R101, or by tuning in to Canale 5, turning down the volume of the TV and turning up that of the radio with the comments of the Gialappa’s Band.

Guida Cucina, the new Mondadori monthly edited by Laura Maragliano, will hit the newsstands tomorrow, Thursday 28 October, with a host of new ideas for people who love to cook.

This new launch expands Mondadori’s already extensive range of titles in the cookery segment, adding a practical guide designed for readers looking for straightforward and traditional advice and recipes, for everyday lunches and dinners.

For every day of the month, Guida Cucina suggests two easy to prepare menus, with advice about combinations of dishes, accompanied by highly detailed recipes and instructions.

The different sections of the magazine are organised in an original way and published in a small and manageable format (13.9×18.5 cm), at 70 cents. Lunario: provides a mix of news to satisfy readers’ curiosity, such as the Saints days of the month, proverbs, grandmothers’ tips and indications about what to do in the garden and vegetable patch; È tempo di: suggestions based on seasonal produce and their preparation in the kitchen; I giorni: recipes, accompanied by photographs, for everyday lunches and dinners; Le filmate: step-by-step dishes explained with the help of images. And of course l’angolo dei dolci (the desserts corner) and cut-out-and-keep Schede (recipe cards).

The launch of the monthly will be supported by an advertising campaign that will run on the Mediaset TV channels, magazines of the Mondadori Group and with point-of-sale posters.

Donna Moderna and the Fondazione Vodafone Italia have launched a new initiative called the “Women & Work Project”, a competition for women which aims to encourage the best social enterprise ideas for women.

There are three areas:

Solidarity. Lending a hand

Entrepreneurial ideas to encourage the employment of women who have suffered violence or who live in disadvantaged socio-economic conditions. Open to women of all ages.

The Web. Let’s get online

Projects linked to the world of the internet or telecommunications and aimed at encouraging the employment of women. Open to women of up to 30 years of age, final-year students or recent graduates.

Home & Work. Getting better organised

Projects to encourage more effective management and conciliate domestic and professional demands in the daily lives of women. Open to women of all ages.

The best projects in each of the three categories will received a prize of €100,000.

How to take part

Application forms can be submitted between 15 October 2010 and midnight on 15 January 2011. In order to request finance you should download the competition notice from the web site www.progettodonnelavoro.it, along with the loan request and business plan forms, register your personal details and submit the completed documents online. A printed copy, along with the attachments, should also be sent to: Fondazione Vodafone Italia, Piazza SS. Apostoli, 81 00187 Rome.

Applications may be made by any women, permanently resident in Italy, who intend to create a business activity with charitable or socially useful aims.

Stefano De Alessandri has been appointed the new general manager of Magazines Italy of the Mondadori Group.

De Alessandri, 50, was born in Milan and has a degree in economics and business administration from Milan’s Bocconi University. He has an extensive and wide-ranging knowledge of the Italian magazine market and has, over the years, also built up considerable managerial experience with important positions at large International publishers.

De Alessandri began his professional life at RCS in 1989, where he held a series of jobs with growing responsibility until 1999, when he moved to Condé Nast as deputy general manager and director.

In 2003 De Alessandri was appointed managing director and general manager of Gruner+Jahr/Mondadori, where he remained until 2005, when he was appointed chief executive and general manager of Hachette Rusconi, the Italian arm of the Lagardére Active group, where he remained until now.

The Mondadori Group wishes to thank Gianni Vallardi for his valuable contribution, made with competence, passion and professionalism during the whole of his time with the company.

Grazia readers now have a an extra way to get access to and read – at any time of the day, also when travelling or abroad – their favourite magazine.

First among women’s fashion weeklies, Grazia has launched its app for the iPad and with iGrazia it is now possible to flick through a digital version of the magazine every week and discover – in addition to everything that is in the print version – a range of additional features specially created for enthusiasts of the new device, including a video-editorial by the editor Vera Montanari, interviews and “chats” with the magazine’s staff.

And to coincide with the Milan Fashion Week there will also be a photo gallery and backstage coverage, which thanks to the quality of the images, will provide a taster of the collections on the catwalks for the 2011 Spring/Summer season.

And for those who want to re-read or get more background from already published interviews, with iGrazia you can access all the content of the last ten issues of the magazine.

To coincide with the 2010 Women’s Fashion Week, the City of Milan and the Mondadori Group, with its titles Grazia and Interni, are the promoters of an initiative entitled Fashion & Design 2.0.

The weekly magazine Grazia, a qualified interpreter of Italian fashion and style, has involved prestigious Italian brands and exploited the know how of its editorial staff to produce a series of innovative fashion performances at the centre of the Ottagono, and open to the whole city.

The monthly Interni, with its long and consolidated experience in the world of design, has selected 4 important and world famous designers and architects to produce 4 large installations inspired by the themes and values of the world of fashion in order to illustrate the connection between the fashion system and the world of design.

The opening of Milan’s Fashion Design House

A symbolic space in the centre of Milan, the Galleria, is transformed into a place of encounter and events dedicated to fashion, but also to design, in order to engage not only the media and fashion professionals who during the Fashion Week converge on Milan, but above all local citizens, during one of the most important periods of the year for Italian industry.

The event is organised in three distinct areas:

1. The design installations at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele

Four designer/architects selected by Interni were asked to produce four installations, macro objects of great symbolic value, celebrating the cross-fertilization between fashion and design; in the creation of the installations, the designers have been inspired by the content of the world of fashion, with the possibility of working with the sorts of materials that are most identifiable with it.

The four installations:

Air du temps,
by Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel and Partners with Moncler

Wooden Thread,
by Lissoni Associati with Gallo

Timeless Chic,
by Vudafieri Saverino Partners with Tod’s

Apparition,
by Alberto Biagetti with yoox.com

2. The Fashion Design House at the centre of the Ottagono

A stage and a large tiered stand built in the centre of the Ottagono, and enriched with highly suggestive design objects design, creating an original and modern backdrop to enliven every day the fashion performances; Grazia has organised 4 days of appointments during which more than 20 Italian fashion brands will give life to the same number of fashion events created and organised exclusively with the magazine’s fashion department. The tiered stand of the Fashion Design House makes it an authentic exhibition space: with the tiers and the terrace decorated by prestigious furniture and design companies, creating an original and very evocative backdrop.

3. Piazza San Fedele, animated by fashion and design

Piazza San Fedele will become an open-air exhibition space dedicated to the city, in which there will be a combination of moments dedicated to the world of fashion and contemporary design.

From next week, Marco Casareto will be the new editor of the monthly magazine Geo.

Marco Casareto, 43, was born in Chelmsford, England. After studying physics at the University of Milan, he began freelancing for a number of magazines including, from 1993, Focus.

He joined the editorial staff of the Gruner+Jahr/Mondadori monthly three years later and in 2000 was appointed section chief with responsibility for coordinating the Focus Extra brand extension. Managing editor from 2002, in 2004 he became the coordinator of the new Gruner+Jahr/Mondadori title, Focus Storia, of which he became deputy editor in 2006 and editor in 2008. The same year he was appointed editor of Geo, a role he kept until November 2009, when he focused on the monthly Focus Storia and related editorial projects.

Following the launch of three new titles in 2010 (Wars, Biografie and Collection), Casareto today re-takes the helm at Geo.