Liaisons dangereuses
Guest commentary Regional publishers who give the Tages-Anzeiger the little finger today will lose the whole hand tomorrow, predicts Christian Rentsch.
Guest commentary Regional publishers who give the Tages-Anzeiger the little finger today will lose the whole hand tomorrow, predicts Christian Rentsch. Tamedia boss Martin Kall must be pretty desperate to get involved in a battle that he can hardly win. However, his analysis is absolutely correct: the Tages-Anzeiger, Tamedia's flagship, is stuck between four rocks. The strong local papers Landbote, Zürichsee-Zeitung, Zürcher Unterländer and Zürcher Oberländer, which are well anchored in their home countries, form a fortress ring around the Tagi's home territory, preventing it from expanding. If it wants to grow in so-called "Million-Zurich", it has to crack this ring.
Kall is too talkative a Machiavellian: At the moment, he likes to flute that he is interested in "any kind of cooperation". But at the same time, he tells anyone who will listen that he wants to get the competition from Zurich out of the way. Because the synergies of such cooperation are negligible as long as the newspapers remain independent, continue to have advertising sovereignty and use their own printing plants. And two or three thousand additional subscribers do not even cover the costs of a new local editorial office and a higher circulation.
The regional publishers know this too. So the only question for them is whether a Tagi expanded to include local splits can really be a threat to them. The answer is no. A look at the voting and election results in these districts shows it: the Tages-Anzeiger, which is still misunderstood as left-liberal, is the wrong newspaper for the rural agglomeration population dominated by the FDP and SVP. And those who are not satisfied with the right-wing local paper are already reading it today.
That leaves the much more important advertisers, the local businesses. And the authorities, who decide which newspaper is their official
publication organ. But why should the local, right-wing bourgeois business community advertise in the politically unreliable Tages-Anzeiger, which in case of doubt opts for urban and against rural interests? And why should the authorities, who have ideal partners in the local newspapers, replace them with the Tagi? In the Zürichsee-Zeitung, for example, they can report on their work largely unquestioned and in some cases even themselves, whereas with the Tages-Anzeiger they always have to expect that a journalist will try to uncover something.
The provincial politicians who are now chanting the mantra of "invigorating competition" need to realize that if Kall's strategy works, in ten years there will be no more diversity of opinion in the Zurich agglomeration, only the Tages-Anzeiger.
> Christian Rentsch was first head of the culture and then the media department of the Tages-Anzeiger. After its abolition at the beginning of 2004, he took early retirement.
Kall is too talkative a Machiavellian: At the moment, he likes to flute that he is interested in "any kind of cooperation". But at the same time, he tells anyone who will listen that he wants to get the competition from Zurich out of the way. Because the synergies of such cooperation are negligible as long as the newspapers remain independent, continue to have advertising sovereignty and use their own printing plants. And two or three thousand additional subscribers do not even cover the costs of a new local editorial office and a higher circulation.
The regional publishers know this too. So the only question for them is whether a Tagi expanded to include local splits can really be a threat to them. The answer is no. A look at the voting and election results in these districts shows it: the Tages-Anzeiger, which is still misunderstood as left-liberal, is the wrong newspaper for the rural agglomeration population dominated by the FDP and SVP. And those who are not satisfied with the right-wing local paper are already reading it today.
That leaves the much more important advertisers, the local businesses. And the authorities, who decide which newspaper is their official
publication organ. But why should the local, right-wing bourgeois business community advertise in the politically unreliable Tages-Anzeiger, which in case of doubt opts for urban and against rural interests? And why should the authorities, who have ideal partners in the local newspapers, replace them with the Tagi? In the Zürichsee-Zeitung, for example, they can report on their work largely unquestioned and in some cases even themselves, whereas with the Tages-Anzeiger they always have to expect that a journalist will try to uncover something.
The provincial politicians who are now chanting the mantra of "invigorating competition" need to realize that if Kall's strategy works, in ten years there will be no more diversity of opinion in the Zurich agglomeration, only the Tages-Anzeiger.
> Christian Rentsch was first head of the culture and then the media department of the Tages-Anzeiger. After its abolition at the beginning of 2004, he took early retirement.
