Head of the week: The remote viewer

Young adults between 15 and 30 have lost their home on TV," says Alexander Mazzara (35). "In Switzerland, TV is only made for older and old people, and we want to change that." We, that is Mazzara and TV veteran Kurt Schaad. In 2009, they had the idea of founding a TV station for young adults that would combine television, the Internet, mobile and social media. For young people today, watching TV is no longer just about watching a program; they also have their smartphone in their hands in front of the TV and often a laptop or tablet PC on their knees. 90 percent of 16- to 24-year-old Swiss people exchange information with friends during a program, post articles or search for further information. So what could be more logical than linking the TV with the computer and both with the smartphone?

That's exactly what Mazzara asked himself - and closed the gap. In January 2010, he and Schaad founded the youth station Joiz, which aims to pick up young people on all channels. The station dovetails the public service it broadcasts with the private world of its viewers, where they are linked to their friends via Facebook, Twitter and the like. And this is how it works: Joiz offers news, entertainment and background information on music, lifestyle, cooking, fashion, cinema, politics, education, health, sexuality and, in the future, sports in various formats. Viewers receive additional information in parallel and in real time to the TV broadcast, for example, the recipe that is recooked in the cooking show, can tweet it or put it on Facebook. They can also get tips on buying meat or find a good butcher in their area. In the politics format, they can join in the discussion or cast their vote. In the music show, they get the latest video of the still unknown band sent directly to their smartphone - and can also win tickets for the next concert. Votings and rankings, the results of which are available within seconds, are also possible and can even influence what happens on the program. And of course, every user can share Joiz content or embed it on their private pages. "This is true cross-media," says Mazzara. "It's becoming more and more important in television to offer information that goes beyond the broadcast and to enable interaction." With a wink, he adds, "Of course, you can also just watch TV with us." Or not. Because you don't even need a TV to join Joiz. Because the station interacts with social media and links all shows and activities to the Joiz website, a laptop or smartphone is all you need.

Balancing act between numbers and letters

Alexander Mazzara was born in Aarau in 1975. Although he writes for the regional daily newspaper as a young man and is enthusiastic about the media, he decides to study civil engineering - and still wonders why. As a boy, he had dreamed of becoming an architect, a profession in which he would have been more likely to live out his creativity. Mazzara quickly realized that he was too bored in the civil engineering office. He lacks the room for maneuver, the joy of playing, the fun of communicating. But Mazzara wouldn't be Mazzara if he didn't finish what he started. He loosened up the time until his civil engineering diploma by taking a job at the local radio station Kanal K in Aargau. "Of course, I also enjoyed dealing with numbers and mastering complicated calculations during my studies," Mazzara softens. "And the fact that I'm good at that benefits me now as an entrepreneur." Nevertheless, the change of direction has long since been decided: After his diploma thesis on the improvement of the hydropower plant of the Jungfraujoch railroad, Mazzara will follow up with postgraduate studies in journalism. "I really wanted to master the tools of journalism and have more feedback," Mazzara explains. "At the regional newspaper, it was always just 'You're already doing a good job.' That wasn't enough for me."

Driver Innovation and Marketing

In 1999, Mazzara's career takes off through all the big, German-language TV stations: From RTL/Pro Sieben, he goes to Swizz Music Television, which is bought by Viva. Then he works in Germany for ARD and ZDF and ends up at SF at the age of 25. There, between 2000 and 2009, Mazzara works mainly for news programs: Rundschau, SF Spe¬zial, 10 vor 10 and Quer, and from 2006 he also produces the format "Start up - Der Weg zur eigenen Firma". This program is a "warm-up format" for the business magazine Eco, which Mazzara later develops together with his boss at the time, Kurt Schaad. "Eco found its audience immediately, but unfortunately we didn't succeed in picking up younger people with Eco either," Mazzara recounts. "The average age of the Eco viewer is 57."

But Mazzara and Schaad make a good team. "Alexander has an eerily good overview, he's a real generalist in the media field and can distinguish the essential from the unessential," Schaad says of his young colleague. The two men can't get young TV viewers out of their minds; they want to get them excited about TV again. So Mazzara and Schaad put their heads together again, and out comes Joiz. "I wanted to do something for young people where I could stand behind the content and say that it had a long-term future, where the content and packaging were right," Mazzara emphasizes. Social media has brought a tremendous dynamic to the way stories are told and content is distributed. We used to exchange panini pictures in the schoolyard, but today the exchange is via Facebook. Linking this completely changed media use in the right way holds huge potential for the media, which we want to exploit. With Joiz, we're giving young people a media home again, a place where they feel at home, where they learn new things and get cool information. That's huge fun for me, too."

Mazzara has caught the perfect time to launch Joiz: Hardly a teenager is without a cell phone, computers are part of the basic equipment in children's and teenagers' rooms, and Facebook is the second, if not the first, home of the "digital natives. It's as if the world had just been waiting for Joiz.

My friend Joiz

Joiz will be on the air 24 hours a day in HD quality from March 28. Mazzara and his team will produce four hours of new programming every day, with the remaining time covered by repeats. The offer is financed on the one hand by sponsors, on the other hand by advertisement and E-Commerce. Joiz will offer a full range of services: "For example, our viewers will be able to buy our presenters' clothes or ingredients for a recipe with just one click," says Mazzara. "We will also be running clickable commercials, which is a very exciting new approach. But we can also book the classic advertising formats such as TV spots or online campaigns."

The fact that the Joiz program interacts with the private worlds of its users opens up completely new possibilities for advertisers. Because every user has to register, Joiz collects a lot of qualified data about its target group. This can be used for targeted advertising and offers. "One of the problems of TV is that you can convey an extremely large number of emotions, but you get extremely little information about your viewers," explains Mazzara. "With our model, we're changing that." Clearly, offers that fit the theme of a show have a pretty good chance of being sold directly. But Joiz also does something to protect its young target group: the station has explicitly excluded erotic and ringtone advertising, as well as value-added service sweepstakes. It's obvious that Joiz's television for young people has hit the nerve of the times and its target group. Even before it went on air, the station was nominated for the "Internet World Business Idea 2011" award as one of the twenty most innovative Internet projects in the German-speaking world.

The station is just one year old and already employs 40 people, including the well-known Swiss top model Anouk Manser in the team of presenters. Mazzara serves as CEO, Kurt Schaad is on the board of directors. Joizers are now eagerly awaiting the start of broadcasting at the end of March. The same will be true of the 3,700 or so Friends that Joiz has already collected on Facebook prior to the start of broadcasting. But Mazzara doesn't think in terms of success and failure. He simply does what excites him, what he is convinced of, what he believes in. That seems to work. Joy and choice, fun and choice - you'd have to be 20 again. Anne-Friederike Heinrich

www.joiz.ch