On September 1, 2010, Curdin Janett will take over the management of Publicis Advertising Agency Switzerland from Fredy Collioud. Curdin Janett can look back on a twenty-year career in advertising. Before joining Publicis Switzerland, Janett was CEO of McCann Switzerland.
To reflect the shift in the industry towards integrated communications, the Group will also be renamed "Publicis Communications Schweiz AG". Fredy Collioud will continue to be responsible for the fortunes of the new Publicis Communications Switzerland as Chairman and Delegate of the Board of Directors. Collioud has been at the helm of the company as CEO and Chairman for twenty years.
Christian Siegrist will remain Managing Director of Publicis Werbeagentur, Pascal Urscheler at Publicis Modem and Erik Neumann will continue to be responsible for Publicis Dialog. They will form the management team under the leadership of Curdin Janett, together with Martin Denecke as Creative Director. As part of the restructuring of the Group, Achill Prakash will also join the management team as Head of Strategic Planning.

www.publicis.ch

Raiffeisenbank Kleinwalsertal in Vorarlberg, Austria, becomes Walser Privatbank. The decisive factor was a new strategic direction, which was planned even before the current situation on the financial markets. It focuses primarily on
The aim is to move closer to customers in Germany, sharpen its profile and thus differentiate itself more strongly from the competition, according to a press release.
The new brand was created in a multi-stage process. The new brand values of "solidity", "proximity" and "commitment" are intended to represent both the tradition from which the bank stems and also to express the emergence into a new era.
The slogan "We offer security today for tomorrow" is intended to meet customers' need for a combination of traditional solidity and reliable future potential. The new brand was officially launched on August 12, 2010.

www.metadesign.ch
www.walserprivatbank.ch

The film "180°" contains many episodic stories at the center of which are people who are put to the test by fate. The emotional balancing act of these people is intensified and clarified by the grand yet intimate music. This is the description of the Suisa Foundation. C-Films producer Anne Walser worked with the Baldenwegs again on this project. Discussions with director Cihan Inan revealed the importance of an emotionally strong film score and the Baldenwegs' desire for a live orchestra. It was the first time that conductor David Zinman agreed to record the music for a feature film with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.
With this award, the jury of the SUISA Foundation for Music honors the Baldenweg siblings for their emotionally powerful musical composition as well as their courage and commitment. The realization of their compositional vision was a great challenge, both logistically and organizationally, and they have set a new standard for film music in Switzerland.
During the Locarno International Film Festival, Marco Blaser, President of the Jury, and Urs Schnell, Director of the SUISA Foundation, presented the award at the "FEVI" in Locarno.

From left to right: Lionel Vincent Baldenweg, Nora Baldenweg, Cihan Inan (film director), Diego Baldenweg, Urs Schnell (SUISA Foundation, Director).

www.suisa.ch

This is the expected low for the year. Due to the summer slump, this takes place every year in July. As the result for July 2008 was also exceeded, the current year is coming ever closer to the record year of 2008, according to the market research company Media Focus on Friday.
Broken down by sector and product group, tobacco products saw the strongest increase at 115.1%. This was followed by energy with 54.6% and the media, which spent 26.2% more on advertising. The leisure, sports and tourism group grew by 19.7%.
In contrast, transport companies recorded 38.9% less advertising expenditure, while the IT sector spent 36.8% less. Initiatives and campaigns were advertised 12.4% less, with political campaigns alone being advertised 29.3% less.
Media Focus compiles monthly gross advertising statistics. All advertising placements at the official rates of the advertising medium - newspaper, poster, cinema, etc. - are evaluated.

www.mediafocus.ch

The operating profit EBIT increased by 16.6 percent to CHF 7.1 million. Sales improved by 8.5 percent to CHF 151.2 million, as the company, which is active in the advertising marketing of electronic, interactive and mobile media, announced on Friday.
Both the offline and online segments grew by 8.5% each. Online contributed 39 percent to sales and offline 61 percent. International business accounted for 23 percent of net sales and 5 percent of EBIT, the report continued. The impact of currency effects on sales and EBIT was
marginal.
For 2010 as a whole, the company continues to anticipate profitable growth and a significant increase in EBIT compared to the previous year.
www.goldbachmedia.com
www.sda.ch

The launch of the SDA Science Service on October 1, 2008 contributed to a stronger presence of science and research topics in the media, writes Michael Schanne, lecturer in media studies at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, as author of the report. The SDA has significantly expanded its reporting on scientific topics from Switzerland and abroad since 2008. All three of SDA's language services (German, French and Italian) have benefited from the expansion.
At the same time, SDA has maintained its journalistic independence, said Schanne when asked by SDA. The news service is free in its choice and organization of topics and sources. Thanks to the service, studies of interest to the public from universities and colleges from all parts of the country have found their way into the media. The SDA could still improve in terms of the breadth of scientific disciplines and the
Large number of universities.
The SDA science service had led to discussions in the industry. According to Schanne, the SDA project with the CRUS has a central function in view of the upheaval in the media world and scarce resources. It is important that the general public is well informed about science and research in Switzerland.
At the beginning of July 2010, the CRUS and the SDA agreed on the continuation of the SDA Science Service. The universities contribute to the financing of this service.
www.sda.ch

According to the US news channel CNN on Thursday, Geoff Morell, Pentagon spokesman, spoke of a mistake that had already put too many lives at risk. Following the publication of around 76,000 pages of secret war records from Afghanistan, the Pentagon has launched an investigation to find out who leaked the documents to the whistleblowing platform.
Now the only responsible course of action for WikiLeaks is to remove all stolen documents from their website and delete all secret material from their computers. Publishing more secret documents would be irresponsible.
The head of the website, Julian Assange, announced via a video link on Thursday that they would soon be publishing around 15,000 more documents. WikiLeaks is about halfway through these documents, he said. Assange did not give a date for publication.
The group "Reporters Without Borders" accused Assange of "incredibly irresponsible behavior" in an open letter. WikiLeaks had repeatedly played a useful role in the past, for example by exposing civil rights violations by the former Bush administration in the war on terror. But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who worked with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous.
The human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, called on WikiLeaks to do more to remove names from the documents. According to the Wall Street Journal, they have already experienced the negative, sometimes deadly consequences for those Afghans who have been known to collaborate and sympathize with international forces, according to a letter to the platform's operators.

www.sda.ch

Online portals and free newspapers are destroying the quality of the Swiss media, according to the findings of the study by scientists led by Zurich sociologist Kurt Imhof. Democracy is suffering as a result. While Polanski and Hirschmann filled the columns, international problems were lost from view, and the journalistic tradition in Switzerland was in a deep crisis, co-author Kurt Imhof told the media in Bern on Friday.
The free culture on the Internet and in commuter newspapers and the pressure on editorial offices to save money are primarily to blame for the media crisis, write the scientists from the University of Zurich in the study published on Friday in Bern, which was first published as a yearbook entitled "Qualität der Medien". The growing free culture with online portals and free newspapers, together with the pressure to save money, is leading to an erosion of quality. As this also affects paid-for titles and broadcasters, democracy is suffering, the scientists conclude.
Instead of balanced reporting on political debates, questions of form dominate media discourse. The information media are neglecting their function of informing citizens about political events. Last fall's minaret initiative is a good example. The proponents dominated the media debate, although the majority of Swiss parties were against the minaret ban, the study continues.
The criticism is also directed at business journalists. According to the authors, they recognized the financial market crisis far too late. In addition, the global economic crisis was reduced to a UBS crisis, which ignored a large part of the issue. Public radio stations fared relatively well in the study: they were significantly better than the private competition and also better than public television.
The scientists examined 46 of 137 media titles - press, radio, television and online portals in all three language regions. They define quality as diversity, relevance, topicality and professionalism. The 370-page report will be published annually in future. In this way, the sociologists and media scientists want to strengthen quality awareness for the media, as Kurt Imhof put it.
The authors have deliberately not outlined possible ways out of the crisis. According to the researchers from the Public Sphere and Society department at the University of Zurich, the negative trend is not coming to an end. The journalistic supply from low-quality media on the Internet and in the printed press will continue to increase. This is because younger media users between the ages of 15 and 34 in particular have grown up with the free culture.
The "Quality of the Media" yearbook is financed and supported by the non-profit foundation "Öffentlichkeit und Gesellschaft". The foundation board includes sociologist Kurt Imhof, Aargau Council of States member Christine Egerszegi and former Federal Council spokesman Oswald Sigg.
Press sees no erosion of journalistic quality
The findings of the new study are met with disapproval in the media industry. The quality of the Swiss media is not declining and free newspapers are well made, say publishers and editors-in-chief. Moreover, the authors' concept of quality is elitist.
Media representatives reject the theory that the free culture with online portals and free newspapers is destroying the quality of the media. According to Hanspeter Lebrument, President of the Swiss Press Association, free newspapers are not a bad thing. They have enabled many people to come into contact with the written language again. In addition, readers today are educated enough to read the papers with a certain inner distance. For a while, there were indeed too many free newspapers, Lebrument continued. But today this has leveled off. As far as the influence of the media on democracy is concerned, Lebrument disagrees with the authors. Today, media diversity is so good that everyone can express their opinion.
Marco Boselli, editor-in-chief of the free newspaper 20 Minuten, also disagrees with the Zurich researchers' assessment. He had to reject the accusation that 20 Minuten was responsible for the decline in quality, he told SDA. If
the authors believe that his newspaper mainly prints agency reports, then they have no idea what 20 Minuten is. His paper relies heavily on in-house services, and 20 Minuten AG employs a total of 150 people in the editorial department, emphasizes Boselli. The commuter newspaper is the newspaper with the highest circulation. This naturally puts pressure on other products that have to face up to economic reality.
Jürg Bachmann, President of the Swiss Private Radio Association, notes that the authors of the study are using a term in which audience response plays no role. However, the number of readers and listeners should not be neglected when talking about quality, otherwise the term quickly becomes elitist.

www.foeg.uzh.ch
www.sda.ch

Tschanz was elected to the Board of Directors two years ago. The reason for her resignation was a considerable workload. This was announced by the mountain railroad company on Friday. The company's next Annual General Meeting will take place on September 25.

www.sda.ch

Kristine Hess previously worked as a presenter at Radio Top. She will be joined by Marcel Giger, the Swiss show mixing champion. He mixes the drinks for the guests with his show interludes and is the co-host of the program. In addition to the cinema, going out and party tips presented, well-known studio guests from the show scene are always interviewed in the newly set up studio. Viktor Giacobbo and Mike Müller are guests in the first program.
The program will be broadcast from August 20 at 6.30 p.m. with hourly repeats.

www.teletop.ch

The collaboration will enable synergies in the areas of studio productions and technical operations. In addition, the young station will benefit from the know-how and modern broadcasting technology of the established local station, according to a statement from SSF. By switching to the 16:9 format, SSF is adapting to the current standard and thus improving the quality for viewers and advertising customers.
The station is also planning a new launch: SSF will be starting a new casting format in the coming months. Preparations are already in full swing, according to the broadcaster. Details are to be announced soon.

www.schweizersportfernsehen.ch

For the next two weeks, oversized signposts in Switzerland's largest cities will be urging people to set off immediately. The highly visible signs will be located in the busy main train stations.
Responsible at Hesskisssulzersutter: Oliver Schneider (CD), Meo Giger and Marion Kähler (graphics), Dieter Boller (text) and Barbara Kummer and Nathalie Zeller (consulting). Responsible at the Swiss Alpine Club: Bruno Lüthi (Head of Hut Marketing).