Lack of advertising revenue: SRG must save a further 50 million francs in 2020
SRG must cut its costs by another 50 million francs next year. SRG Director General Gilles Marchand informed the staff on Monday about the latest cost-cutting measures.
SRG media spokesperson Edi Estermann confirmed corresponding reports from Blick.ch and Radiotelevisione svizzera (RSI) at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency. Because advertising revenues are falling by CHF 30 million in the current year and a shortfall of CHF 20 million has already been budgeted for 2019, SRG's costs will have to be reduced by a total of CHF 50 million in the coming year, Estermann said.
According to Marchand, the continuation of the transformation is necessary because the media world is changing radically and commercial revenues are continuing to fall.
How exactly this additional 50 million is to be saved has not yet been defined. However, according to Estermann, it will hardly be possible without affecting programming and staff. Following the rejection of the No Billag initiative, SRG launched an extensive savings and restructuring program worth a total of CHF 100 million back in 2018. Around 200 jobs are to fall victim to this by 2022.
In April 2019, it was announced that SRG would take over the production company TPC in full again by the beginning of 2020 as part of the savings program. In addition, a new IT competence center is to be created. This will cost 40 jobs, 20 of which will be cut through redundancies and early retirements. (SDA)
