Meet The Writers
Jill Bilzi
Jill Bilzi is the former West Coast Editor of TWICE, (This Week in Consumer Electronics), where she covered the home video and CD markets; HDTV conversion in the United States; and domestic and international retail consolidation in the consumer electronics industry. Prior to TWICE, Jill was the West Coast Editor of Video Business Magazine, a New-York-City-based trade publication. She is now a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
George Cole
George Cole has been writing about technology since the late 1980s, and in addition to being a long-time contributor to One to One, he has written for a wide range of newspapers, magazines, journals, and websites including The Financial Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, Music Week, Newsweek, New Scientist, What Video, The Radio Times, Readers’ Digest, Empire, and The Register. He also writes about music for Jazzwise magazine and has had a book published, The Last Miles, which is about the music of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.
Dan Daley
Dan Daley has covered the professional audio and multimedia industries, with articles in every major journal in the industry globally including Billboard, Mix, EQ, Resolution, One To One and Sound on Sound, as well as publications including the London Daily Telegraph, Fast Company, Wired, the Wine Spectator, History Channel Magazine and AARP The Magazine. He is also the author of several books, most recently Nashville’s Unwritten Rules: Inside the Business of Country Music (Overlook Press, 2000, New York) and the digital music technology chapter of the ninth edition of Music Business Handbook and Career Guide (Sage Books, 2009, Denver), the world’s most widely sold textbook for academic music industry programmes.
Dan has written hit songs for artists including the Charlie Daniels Band (‘Still In Saigon’) and Johnny Winter (‘Rain’). He was co-owner and CFO of Pyramid Recording Studios in New York City, where he also engineered and produced projects including MTV’s The Big Show. Dan is also a veteran moderator, serving as the co-chair of REPLItech Conferences in San Francisco, Miami and Amsterdam, as well as moderator of the SAE Platinum Panel Global Webcast in Miami, moderator and live interviewer for the University of Westminster’s Music Tank conference in London in 2006, and various panels at the AES Conventions, going one-on-one with industry legends including Phil Ramone and Eddie Kramer. He is a voting member of the Recording Academy and a graduate, cum laude, of the Baccalaureate program of the City University of New York. Dan lives in New York City and Nashville.
Philip De Lancie
Philip De Lancie is a freelance journalist and business communications writer with an extensive knowledge of media production and manufacturing. As a mastering engineer for 13 years at Fantasy Records in Berkeley, California, Philip cut thousands of releases for CD and vinyl, including hundreds of classic jazz, blues, and R&B titles from Fantasy’s extensive vaults. He was also responsible for multimedia projects at Fantasy including a CD-ROM catalogue and an Original Jazz Classics website. As a writer, Philip has published over 350 feature articles in trade magazines serving professionals in content creation, management, and distribution, including more than 50 pieces in One to One covering media and formats, mastering, manufacturing techniques, and industry trends.
Doug Dixon
Douglas Dixon is an independent technology consultant, author, and speaker specializing in digital media and portable devices. Previously a product manager and software developer at Intel Corporation and Sarnoff Corporation, his consulting work now includes technology analysis and communications, and expert witness services.
Doug is the author of four books on digital media, and has published hundreds of feature articles in magazines including DV Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, Digital Photographer, and Computer Shopper / CNET Reviews. He currently writes for publications including Videomaker magazine and the US 1 Newspaper in Princeton, and was previously editor-in-chief of Mediaware magazine and technical editor of Camcorder & Computer Video magazine. Doug also has presented over a hundred seminars and talks on digital media over the past decade, to professional groups, and at conferences including CES, NAB, DV Expo, and Government Video Expo. For more than a decade, he has made his articles and technical references freely available on his Manifest Technology blog and website’
Barry Fox
Barry Fox started out with a degree in Botany but much more usefully trained in electronics in the Royal Air Force. He then worked as a patent agent, patenting inventors’ ideas. From there he slid into journalism, writing and broadcasting first about hifi and subsequently all areas of consumer electronics and computing. Barry still finds patents a very useful tool for discovering what secretive companies are doing but won’t talk about. Winner of several UK Technology Press Awards and long-term European contributing editor for Warren Publishing (the US-based publisher of trade newsletters including Consumer Electronics Daily) Barry stays independent by doing no paid consultancy work, advertising or advertorial puff writing.
Debbie Galante Block
Debbie Galante Block is a freelance journalist who has worked for magazines like Tape/Disc Business, Emedia and One to One. She has been covering physical media for so many years that it’s tough to count. However, she also writes extensively about the music industry for magazines such as Billboard and In Tune Monthly where she has interviewed everyone from Steven Tyler to Celine Dion. Professional audio is another area of interest which she developed working for Pro Sound News and while working on a book about Surround Sound. Debbie lives with her husband and two daughters in a suburb of New York… far enough from the city to have trees, but still close enough to experience the excitement.
Larry Jaffee
Based in New York, Larry Jaffee edited Replication News (later known as Medialine) from 1998 to 2005, and oversaw its annual DVD conference. In this capacity, he created and launched the ‘Alex Awards’ CD/DVD packaging competition, named in honour of Alex Steinweiss, who created the first album cover in 1939 for Columbia Records. In 2006, Larry began writing as a freelancer for One to One and MediaPack, of which he also edited two issues. Larry was also a regular columnist for Mediaware, and served as executive producer of the Future of Packaged Media conference in February 2009 for the Content Delivery & Storage Association (formerly IRMA) and the Media-Tech Association.
He also held the title of editor-in-chief at Promo magazine and Mediacentral.com, managing editor of CableVision magazine, and Washington, DC bureau chief of Multichannel News. As a freelance writer, he has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Hollywood Reporter, and Vibe, and currently writes about music for The Audiophile Voice. He is also the publisher of the Walford Gazette, a quarterly newspaper about EastEnders (http://www.wgazette.com), and the author of a self-published book, Albert Square & Me: The Actors of EastEnders. Larry may be reached at lsjaffee@gmail.com.
Mel Lambert
Mel Lambert is a seasoned journalist and technical writer with close to 40 years of hands-on experience within a wide range of professional and consumer electronic technologies. He has authored several hundred articles for leading trade, business and consumer magazines, in addition to presenting technical papers and organizing panel discussions at a number of trade conferences and conventions around the world.
Mel also operates a marketing communications company that offers a cross section of services, including product brochures, corporate presentations, ad copywriting, direct-mail campaigns, newsletters, sales collateral and website media.
Linda Lombri
Linda Lombri is a 22-year veteran of the packaging industry, with particular knowledge of the home entertainment media environment. During her career, she provided Marketing and Communications support for two of the industry’s graphic arts leaders, Shorewood Packaging, a business of International Paper, and pioneer printer/packager, the Queens Group, Inc. Along the way, she witnessed the evolution of the industry from the long box to digital delivery. Linda has worked closely with the trade media, providing press material, advertising and advertorials to key industry publications, and helping to launch and promote new and interesting packaging solutions and printing processes.
Linda was instrumental in the development of Shorewood’s greenchoice Environmental Solutions for Packaging and POP Displays initiative. This program addresses various sustainability issues and introduced Shorewood’s portfolio of environmentally-friendly packaging. She considers writing to be her strong suit, and has a facility for turning complex technical information into creative, benefit-driven messages for business, consumer and media audiences alike. She is currently working as a consultant and freelance writer.
Linda received her MS graduate degree from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA and her BA degree from Queens College of City University of New York. She lives in Montclair, NJ with her teenage daughter.
Michael Mascioni
Michael Mascioni is a freelance writer on digital media, video, and other topics for such publications as Internet Evolution and Digiday Daily, and a market research consultant in digital media. He also is a conference planner in digital media. He has done research/consulting projects for such companies as Sony Pictures, Paramount Communications, HBO, AT&T, the IMAX Corporation, and Image Entertainment. Michael was formerly an analyst in the broadband entertainment group at Strategy Analytics, and was a research associate in the consumer electronics practice at LINK Resources. He served as program director of the Intertainment conferences on interactive entertainment and managing editor of the A&A Monthly newsletter on Interactive Entertainment. He was program director of the conference "Revolutionizing Interactive Marketing in Public Spaces- the Mobile and Gestural Digital Signage Imperative," and did program planning consulting work for Screenmedia Expo.
Fiona Maxwell
Fiona has worked across many different media genres including home entertainment, theatrical film and television distribution, film restoration, digital remastering, post production, archive and digital asset management. She has worked for the Rank organization, the PolyGram group of companies, CIC, Carlton and Granada International, and was with ITV for over 12 years. Fiona is a regular speaker at technical conferences and international film and television festivals, focusing on new technologies, digital workflows, film restoration, preservation and funding, and has published articles on her specialist subjects of restoration, preservation and re-mastering, including her regular column for D2D.
As Director of Operations for ITV Studios Global Entertainment, Fiona’s international distribution role covered broadcast, theatrical cinema release and, for the Home Entertainment market, DVD, Blu-ray and VOD, with responsibility for one of Europe’s largest media archives of over 400,000 elements, and managing the supply chain and route to market for worldwide exploitation in all media.
Now an independent media management consultant, Fiona is deputy chair of the BAFTA Archive steering committee and an active member of the BFI, AMIA, and WFTV. Her collaboration with the Marin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, the David Lean Foundation and the BFI has won awards and accolades within the industry.
Some of the highlights of her career have been working with the David Lean Foundation to restore his films in conjunction with the BFI; appearing on BBC Television News speaking about the restoration of John Huston’s African Queen; introducing A Night To Remember on stage at the Cannes Film Festival; accepting a joint award at the Focal Awards in London with Martin Scorsese for the restoration of The Red Shoes.
Jody Raynsford
Jody Raynsford is an experienced freelance journalist specialising in entertainment, culture and travel, and based in Brighton and London. He has an NCTJ post-graduate qualification in journalism and an honours degree in law.
Although Jody has considerable experience in the entertainment sector, he writes across a number of subjects. He has written for publications including DVD & Blu-ray Review, Cue Entertainment, Total Film, Lovefilm.com, The Press Gazette, Journalism.co.uk and many more. He has also edited special projects, such as the commemorative brochure for the British Video Association Awards and DVD & Blu-ray Review’s Discs Of The Decade supplement.
Jody has also been commissioned to write news and features across a range of diverse subjects from the impact of blogging on media coverage of the Gulf War to the importance of The Matrix on DVD, from recounting his experience on the Royal Marines Commando assault course in Lympstone to an in-depth analysis of the effects of the European working directive on junior NHS doctors.
As a former editor of B2B entertainment publication Home Entertainment Week Jody has considerable experience in writing news, features, comment, reviews and conducting interviews.
Jean-Luc Renaud
Swiss-born Jean-Luc Renaud – a BAFTA member – has been involved in the film, TV and new media industries for over 25 years. After graduate studies at the universities of Lausanne and Geneva, he went to the United States where he spent seven years, earning a PhD from Michigan State University, teaching at the University of Minnesota and pursuing consulting activities.
Jean-Luc was then invited as a Research Fellow at the European Institute for the Media in Manchester where he co-authored The Future of the European Audiovisual Industry. He then joined Logica, the UK’s largest independent IT company. There he worked on broadcast/media technology assignments and took an active part in Europe’s debate on advanced TV standard, MAC, digital television and video delivery over telecom networks.
In 1991, he set up Globalcom Ltd, where he continued to carry out consultancy assignments and develop the company’s publishing activities with the newsletter Advanced Television Markets. In 1997, Jean-Luc launched DVD-Intelligence, and the annual companion DVD and Beyond magazine. He also organizes conferences and seminars.
Elizabeth Toppin
Elizabeth Toppin has been writing on a variety of topics for over 20 years, from real estate and architecture to London local history, and the history of denim jeans to the collectability of maps and classic cars. Since 1994 she has been writing about the recorded media industry, first as a staff writer for One to One magazine, and then as its editor, with a brief foray into office equipment along the way. She has also been the moderator at industry conferences of various panels, from test equipment to studios and the supply chain.
Elizabeth was born in the US and grew up in Barbados, where she attended Queens College, before returning to the US and receiving her high school diploma at Phillips Exeter Academy and a BA magna cum laude in English and Philosophy at Boston University. She has lived in the UK for many years.
Steve Traiman
Steve Traiman has been covering multimedia audio, video and game equipment, production, replication, packaging and distribution since 1974-1979 when he was Tape/Audio/Video Editor for Billboard Magazine, including creation of the first Billboard International Video Music Conference. He spent five years with RIAA as Vice President & Executive Director, where he created the Compact Disc Group of CD manufacturers and record companies for the successful launch of the CD.
He was also Director of Promotions & Special Events for CES Publishing/International Thomson Retail Press (Consumer Electronics, Audio Times, Video Business, Autosound Marketing, Home Satellite Business), producing two successful Post-CES Conferences; Associate Publisher/Marketing for Coming Attractions, sold in bulk to home video stores; and a consultant to what is now the Content Delivery & Storage Association (CDSA), producing pre- and post-Conference editorial coverage for three years, as a client of his own Creative Copy by Steve Traiman freelance business writing company, which he launched in 1993. He was a frequent contributor to One to One and MediaPack since 1994.
Current Issue
Magazine Features
DOING IT IN DIGITAL - Repeating the physical success of home entertainment
Fireside chats, rock star moments, and consumer panels were the highlights of this year’s PEVE conference, and D2D reports on some of the many topics covered at the event.
Every conference has its rock star moment, and this year’s PEVE was no exception. Danny Kaye, keynote speaker on the first day, took to the stage to the rousing strains of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, which brought goofy smiles to just about everyone (at least everyone of a certain age) in the audience. Kaye, the EVP Global Research & Technology Strategy, Twentieth Century Fox, showed a video clip of some of Hollywood’s latest and greatest movie moments and declared, “It’s this kind of content that compels consumers to buy.”
Reducing seasonal susceptibility - The merger of two packaging giants
AGI Media was bought by Atlas Holdings last year, changed its name and identity and then merged with Shorewood. Tony Garnish, European CEO of AGI Shorewood, tells Elizabeth Toppin how the company has overcome various associated challenges – but isn’t yet ready to reveal a new name.
LINES OF DEMARCATION Old and new technology models at NAB
This year’s NAB event focused on looking forward to 3D, second screens, and Smart TV - whatever the heck that is, Dan Daley muses. New technologies offered a refreshing focus after a year spent on seemingly endless legal and legislative issues.
The NAB Show in Las Vegas (16th-19th April 2012) showed decent stats: exhibitor numbers rose slightly to just over 1,600 and they splayed out over more space (815,000 square feet versus 745,000 in 2011). Attendance was flat, though, at 91,932 from 151 countries, according to NAB’s preliminary figures, and substantially below the 108,000-plus who attended in 2007, just before the recession hit.
DIGITAL OR BUST IN VEGAS? The physical media market under scrutiny
A realization that maybe it’s time to figure out a way to jump on the digital bandwagon dominated the proceedings at Packaged Media & Beyond 2012, reports Larry Jaffee.
Maybe it was the Association of Independent Media Manufacturers Association (AIMMA) joining forces with the Media-Tech Association (MTA) and the Colonial Purchasing Co-operative to produce a US show like the latter did in the two previous years. Or maybe it was the zany Day Two keynote presentation by Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman whose oldest running US independent movie studio has been making independent, non-mainstream movies for nearly 40 years.
HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD - Paramount and Universal Turn 100
Two major studios celebrate their centenaries this year and a lot has changed since they were both founded. Jill Bilzi looks at how they are coping with box office fluctuations, changes in home entertainment delivery, and the increasing power of social media.
