Basler Zeitung Medien cuts 25 jobs

The reason for this is that the Basler Zeitung publishing house wants to concentrate on its core business, the Basler Zeitung, in the future, says communications manager Roger Berger in response to an inquiry from the SDA news agency. In the course of this reorganization, the brokerage business will be discontinued completely. Exactly where in the publishing house the 25 jobs will be cut is not yet clear. He added that layoffs could not be avoided in individual areas. However, the editorial staff of the Basler Zeitung will not be affected.The question of a social plan does not arise at the moment, Berger explained. BZM did not want to answer further questions to SDA. In the media release, BZM regretted the measures.

"Concentration on core business" is only half the truth

What is not clear from the media release is that the discontinuation of the brokerage business has less to do with the focus on the core business and more directly to do with the departures of former CEO Roland Steffen and advertising market manager Harry Zaugg announced in September. This is because the two BZM executives are continuing to run the brokerage business - via the Oftringen-based company Zaugg & Partner, which was jointly founded in October, as the Basel-based news portal Onlinereports already noted a few weeks ago.

But how did Steffen and Zaugg come to "steal" the brokerage business from BZM? It's simple: The two of them brought it to BZM at the time - and are now naturally taking it away again.

Keymedia brought profit to BZM from

To understand this, you have to look back a bit: When Steffen and Zaugg moved from the Publicitas branch in Aarau to BZM in 2005 - Steffen became BaZ publishing director at the time - not only their crew followed them, but also a large customer base, including Otto's. The reason: customers wanted to continue to be served by Steffen and Zaugg. This led to BZM founding a subsidiary at the time, Keymedia, which continued to broker advertisements from customers to third parties. It is worth noting that PubliGroupe still held a 37 percent stake in BZM at the time and was not at all pleased that some of its Aarau customers were turning their backs on it. But the Baz publisher at the time, Matthias Hagemann, took a pragmatic view. "With Key Media, we created a legal vessel for Mr. Steffen's clientele, which incidentally came in handy in that it allowed us to motivate Publicitas Basel to do more," he told Werbewoche at the time. Later on, Allmedia joined in - for the purpose of a division of labor: from then on, Keymedia brokered advertising for newspapers and magazines and Allmedia in the electronic sector.

But Steffens and Zaugg's customers also came in handy for BZM because they generated sales and, right from the start, profits. In its 2005/06 annual report, BZM reported Key Media's sales for the first and last time: 13.5 million Swiss francs. That was 5 percent of the then group sales of 272 million Swiss francs. In the meantime, this share is likely to be significantly higher - Onlinereports, citing an unnamed "reliable source," yesterday gave the figure of 37 million - 2 million of which was profit. In other words, the fact that BZM is losing Keymedia and Allmedia is likely to increase its problems rather than reduce them.

Otto's and Landi remain loyal to Zaugg

It is still unclear how much of the current Key and Allmedia customers Steffen and Zaugg will be able to take with them. When asked, Zaugg said that while he has several commitments so far, he has only been able to make concrete bookings for Otto's and Landi. "We're starting small again," he said.

By the way: Steffen himself is involved in Zaugg & Partner, but he will not be operationally active there. A few weeks ago, he joined the management of Otto's in Sursee, as reported by Onlinereports.

Markus Knöpfli