Five private TV stations rehearse the uprising

The private TV stations Tele 24, Tele Züri, Tele Bärn, Tele M1 and Tele Tell are apparently at the end of their tether. They no longer want to wait until the end of the negotiations on a new radio and TV law and are calling on the Federal Council to bring Swiss advertising regulations into line with those of foreign TV stations with advertising windows in Switzerland within a year. Furthermore, the Federal Council should oblige the SRG to cede at least 10 percent of the fees to Swiss private TV stations - currently this would be an amount of around 100 million francs annually. Otherwise, says initiator Roger Schawinski (Tele Züri, Tele 24), the five broadcasters are planning the "unilateral introduction of European advertising guidelines." Schawinski: "In addition, we are considering stopping all traffic with the Federal Office of Communications. "To limit the damage, Tele 24 will discontinue the magazines "Inside," "24Minuten" and "Gesucht wird..." in mid-August. Last year, Tele 24 and Tele Züri recorded a loss of around CHF 7 million on costs of CHF 34 million. Tele Bärn suffered a loss of
5 million costs a loss of 1.6 million francs and Tele M1 at costs of 6 million francs a loss of
2 million francs. "If I have to, I'll just become a pirate in Zurich again," Schawinski told WerbeWoche defiantly. (af/mk)