"Läb wohl, liebs Beromünster", warbles folklore noodle Maja Brunner to the neo-rustic four-quarters intoned by composer Carlo Brunner and his Superländlerkapelle. He wrote the folk song especially for Radio DRS. Because on December 28, SRG wants to, or rather has to, shut down the broadcasting tower on the Blosenberg near Beromünster, which at 215 meters is the tallest building in Switzerland. Apart from the fact that medium wave has steadily lost importance with the advent of ultra-short wave, the electrosmog limits of the transmitters were also far too high. "But what was so beautiful there will never be lost. Digital radio will be born again...", sings Brunner optimistically and expediently in the spirit of the SRG communicators. To date, the station with its folkloristic Musigwälle 531 still had 300,000 listeners, but many of them are at an age where switching to a DAB device is no longer a small matter.
Far more interesting than the SRG's challenge of explaining the procedure to its homeless listeners is a look at a few curiosities about the so-called "Landessender", which is marked Beromünster on the dials of older transistor radios and is considered by the older generation to be synonymous with a free and independent Switzerland during the Second World War.
When the farewell party takes place on the weekend of 11 October in the neighboring municipality of Gunzwil, where the transmitter is located, the people of Gunzwil will do so with a smile and a tear in their eye. Because when the transmitter went into operation in May 1931, the PTT considered the place name Gunzwil ("Gunzbu" in local dialect) to be too unrepresentative for a national transmitter, too "bünzlig" to be used internationally on the radio transmitter dials. But the neighboring community, then called Münster (today still "Möischter"), was out of the question because there was already a station in the German city of Münster and confusion would have been inevitable. So the "Möischterer" remembered their history and the name Beromünster, which the former market town bore until 1798. The Lucerne Grand Council approved the official renaming in 1934, and Beromünster went around the world. If the renaming had gone wrong, the PTT would have named the station - far less exotic - after the neighboring town of Sursee.
Incidentally, the farewell party in "Gunzbu" in mid-October will be a kind of late recognition of the local community by those responsible for the station. The people of Gunzwil had always regarded the station as their own and have felt painfully ignored since the name was given. But that's not all: the recognition is short-lived, because on January 1, 2009, the municipality finally merges with Beromünster ...
René Worni
Listen here: Läb wohl dear Beromünster

The first Advertising Week appeared on August 27, 1973. The title has remained the same to this day, but pretty much everything else has changed. Or so you would think. If you marvel at the quirky layout with the countless titles in various fonts, the poorly resolved black and white images, framed here and there with bars like obituaries, then today's Werbe¬woche really is a paper from another planet in comparison. The '73 issue may just about serve as a panopticon for poor commercial graphics - albeit with a slight cult following.
But there are interesting parallels in terms of content. As early as 1973, the "TV ratings were in the basement", for example, the "reach for women in the average block fell from 26.6 % to 18.3 %". 1973 was also the year when Ringier snatched the important Lucerne publishing house J. C. Bucher from under the nose of its competitor Jean Frey in the "battle of the press giants", not least with "extraordinarily modern and well-equipped printing plants" and such "important press organs" as the Luzerner Neueste Nachrichten and the magazine for photography Camera with a Europe-wide reputation. Ringier is said to have paid 30 million for J. C. Bucher back then. 1973 was also the year when Ringier let the paper die for everyone and launched Annette (for women between 20 and 40).
There was talk of a "lean magazine" with an advertising section that would be limited to 15 percent of the magazine's average size of 40 pages with an initial circulation of 70,000 copies. The program magazine TR 7, which was predicted to have a dry spell of two years, was also launched in November. Another parallel is provided by Detlef Thierling, the controversial creator and first editor-in-chief of Werbewoche, in one of his biting editorials written in bumpy German. It deals with today's once again topical discussion about transparency in the advertising business: "...then one tries to make an active contribution to the object of price stability by daring to attempt to force the disclosure of calculations. Those involved in the debate on both sides will not give up so quickly."
Less reminiscent of today's times is the bold advertisement by the company Blausiegel, which advertised its condoms under the title "The Super Condom", which the editorial team noted with approval. Unfortunately, biting comments and criticism of the industry such as those penned by Thierling are rarely found in today's trade journals. (rw)