International audiovisual sector profiling

Since 2010, the report “Io sono Cultura”, curated by Fondazione Symbola and Unioncamere, has annually drawn up a statistical framework of the Italian cultural and creative industrial supply chains. In these researches, the “audiovisual” sector – in line with main international studies – refers to all those activities related to theatrical films, videos, radio broadcasting and television programming, according to ATECO classification 2007 – up to four detailed digits (6). 

(6) Ateco 2007 is Italy’s standard industrial classification adopted by the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (Istat) for domestic statistical surveys of economic nature. Ateco 2007 is the Italian naming of the Nomenclature of Economic Activities (NACE) adopted by Eurostat in its most recent version (rev. 2) and adapted by Istat to the specific features of the Italian economic system in its most detailed voices. Ateco 2007 is perfectly consistent to NACE up to the fourth detailed figure (615 classes), whereas the fifth (categories) and sixth digits (sub-categories) describe more specifically Italian activities. 

Audiovisual perimeter and core activities 

Setting off from the entire audiovisual perimeter above, a narrower boundary was chosen, more specifically that of Cinema and Television. The set of activities related to these fields are more restricted but completely included within the definition of audiovisual and allows us to name the object of this study as audiovisual industry core. The data source exploited are two:

• Istat’s Archivio Statistico delle Imprese Attive (ASIA) – a database already used as a foundation for the profiling of national account figures related to non-agricultural private sectors and more generally for the analysis of official statistics;
• The official Business Register of the Italian Chambers of Commerce.

As for the method adopted by the Report “Io sono cultura,” estimates were made regarding internal employment (i.e. pinpointed by workplaces) and added value for each ATECO class. 

In connection with the method of the report “Io sono cultura,” it was possible to structure the main data related to the count of business figures and the features of the productive framework to a detailed territory in time (chapter 1). 

In addition, detailed estimates were made on internal employment (i.e. localized by workplaces) and on the added value (7) for single categories (5 classes up to the fourth digit of the ATECO 2007 classification) and for territories (provinces). The estimates, from year to year, are made in compliance with the national account frameworks identified by sector and territory by Istat’s domestic and local data (8) (chapter 2.)  

(7) The added value, meaning the data of the productive activity of each sector, is computed as the difference between the value of the production of goods and services achieved by single productive categories and the value of the intermediate goods and services utilized (raw and auxiliary materials and services supplied by other productive units.) The sum of the added value of the different domestic industries, increased by VAT and indirect taxes on imports, provides the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

(8) Starting from September 23, 2019, the national accounts, based on the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010), have undergone a general revision aimed at introducing improvements in the specific variables of the measurement methods, also by adding more updated information sources or, in some cases, entirely new. This review, which took place in coordination with Eurostat and with most of the EU countries, has produced significant changes in the estimates of the industrial groups.

Once the main national account figures had been quantified, the survey pursued a further objective, piecing together the audiovisual core according to funds granted to the Film&TV industries (chapter 3.) While for 59.14 and 60.20 the classes are clear-cut (in the first case all companies are related to cinema, while in the second to television), for the three remaining classes (59.11, 59.12, 59.13) it wasn’t possible to identify a prevalence of one of the two groups, which led to the implementation of a specific research within different areas carried out starting from the microdata related to a sample of over 4,000 active companies (9):

1. The first was based on the elaboration of textual data concerning the corporate objectives and, more specifically, through text mining techniques, in order to identify keywords in the corporate objectives that might indicate the productive orientation of each company according to a scale divided in three groups (mainly television; mixed; mainly cinema);
2. The second took off from the Chambers of Commerce archives by analyzing the activity description of each company in order to trace the “Cine” or “Tele/Tv” strings that are specific to these two categories;
3. The third focused on verifying the secondary activities of companies within the Chamber of Commerce archives, in order to analyze further activities (not necessarily enacted) beyond the main one. In this case, the classification criterion was based on the presence of secondary activities within the two clear-cut classes (59.14 for cinema and 60.20 for television);
4. The fourth took off from the Tax Credit archives for audiovisual products published by MiBAC and distinguished by sector (audiovisual or theatrical); the eventual exploitation of these funds made it possible to understand in which production areas the company was active;
5. The last was based on the observation of products and releases found directly on the websites of more than half of the companies analyzed, for an employment rate coverage of nearly 90% of the sector.

Overall, each company has been reclassified according to these three fields, in order to estimate the value of the contribution of each sub-group to the audiovisual core (companies, employment and added value.) Chapter 3 reports the results of this study, aimed at trying to understand the roles and dynamics taking place within the sector.

(9)  This list is achieved by omitting nearly 1,300 self-employed workers from the total that can be found in the Istat registers, workers that cannot be classified as corporates and therefore are not listed in the Business Register archives (‘Registro delle Imprese’) which would offer the necessary qualification data (corporate objectives, activity description, etc.).