SF remains the most-watched channel

Sporting events such as the European Football Championships and the Olympic Games in Beijing had delivered particularly good figures in the previous year, explained television director Ueli Haldimann to the media on Tuesday. "Compared to 2007, the last year without any major sporting events, we only lost 0.2 percentage points." Information programs have lost the most, such as the main edition of "Tagesschau". In 2008, it achieved a market share of 55.5 percent. Last year it was still at 53 percent. Ten years ago, the flagship program still achieved a market share of around 70 percent. The "Arena" was also less popular in 2009 and suffered a drop of 1.5 percent to 25.3 percent market share.

Increasing competition from abroad
Overall, Haldimann is nevertheless satisfied. It is a good achievement that the SF channels have remained reasonably stable over the years. This achievement is all the better when one considers the growing competition from the private sector and from abroad. However, the biggest competitors for attention last year were not the German private channels of the RTL or ProSiebenSat.1 Group, but channels from the home countries of the foreign population. Programs from Turkey, for example, or from countries in the Balkans already had a combined market share of 16.1 percent last year. That is more than the RTL Group with 15.7 percent and the ProSiebenSat.1 Group with 12 percent. Within five years, these "channels from the homeland" have gained around 6% market share.

(Pictures: SF)