Eight years after the grounding of Swissair, the airline Swiss has bought its trademark rights. Swiss spokesman Jean-Claude Donzel told the Sonntag newspaper that a deal had recently been agreed with Swissair's liquidator Karl Wüthrich. Now the airline can, if it wishes, fly under the Swissair name again in future. For the time being, the brand will not be used commercially. "But we wanted to prevent someone else from suddenly flying under the Swissair name," Donzel continued.
In return, Swiss is waiving a claim against Swissair. As the share dividend of Swissair and SAir Group will only amount to around ten percent, Swiss is de facto waiving around ten million francs. The article goes on to say that the amount does not seem very high, as Swissair's brand value was estimated at half a billion after the bankruptcy. This means that Swissair was one of the most valuable brands in Switzerland before its demise.

Cablecom has been struggling with the outflow of customers for some time now. However, the planned brand change alone - Cablecom is to be named either after the parent company UPC (United Pan-European Communications) or after the American owner Liberty Global - is unlikely to appease the notoriously dissatisfied customers. The cable network provider therefore wants to investigate the causes. Over the next three weeks, detailed 90-minute discussions will be held with a "three-digit number of customers" to find out where the shoe pinches, as the NZZ am Sonntag writes. In order to convey that they really mean business, it is not interns who are sent on home visits, but members of management and top management. That's real customer care!

The motto of the new season is "Marginal zones". The Theater an der Winkelwiese promises a fresh theatrical winter with premieres and revivals. The Swiss premiere of "Country Music" is the main focus. Vizner Borel has designed and realized a website for the theater.
Vizner Borel is staging the new season with the Winkel season magazine, F4 posters and the new website.
Responsible at Theater Winkelwiese: Stephan Roppel (overall responsibility), Fanti Baum (dramaturgy). Responsible at Vizner Borel: Lajos Vizner, Guillaume Borel (overall responsibility), Florian Steiner (AD), consulting; Andrea Vizzarro (consulting). Photography: Filippo Romano, Milan (angle), Jonas Kuhn (poster). Robi Fazio & Marco De Luca (website).

Thomas Gottschalk is getting support as host of "Wetten dass...?": Michelle Hunziker will be part of the next edition of the ZDF show on October 3 in Freiburg, as the Bild-Zeitung reported according to SDA. Because the show is to become more spontaneous, Gottschalk will in future only get to know the bets and the candidates during the show. The 32-year-old will present them to him and the audience. As before, Gottschalk will host the show, chat with the celebrity guests on the sofa and present the stars on stage.
Back in 1998, Hunziker presented the Golden Camera awards together with Gottschalk. A year later, the two led the audience through the program at the Michael Jackson & Friends benefit concert.

From September 16, 2009, anyone entering the second floor of the Hohe Promenade parking garage in Zurich will be greeted by a world of images of Zurich's two cultural institutions, the Opera House and the Tonhalle Orchestra. The entire right-hand side wall is adorned with almost 100 meters of opera and ballet scenes from Zurich Opera House, while the Tonhalle Orchestra depicts its musicians on the left-hand side. The visual worlds staged by CS Media are underpinned by new colors on the walls, ceilings and pillars. The lighting specially developed for this installation ensures very bright and safe parking spaces and facilitates orientation on the parking deck.
CS Media specializes in the development and marketing of eye-catching marketing platforms. CS Media uses various interior design tools and point-of-arrival measures to stage brands and messages in parking garages.

The media union Comedia doubts that the Competition Commission is the right institution to decide on the consequences of a merger of national scope on the media market. Newspapers are not chewing gum: the advertising market of two regional free newspapers cannot be the sole criterion for approving the takeover of the domestic business of the French-speaking Swiss media company Edipresse by the Zurich-based Tamedia.
The takeover of Edipresse makes Tamedia the largest media company in the Swiss daily newspaper sector and a monopolist in the market for free morning newspapers throughout the country. A good half of the paid daily newspapers in Switzerland are now owned by Tamedia as a result of the merger. In effect, the Zurich publishing house now has a monopoly on opinion, which calls into question the supposed diversity of the Swiss press and opens the floodgates to corporate journalism. However, Bakom, which has more extensive powers in this respect than Weko, remains silent.
The increased exchange of articles at the Bernese "Bund" and Zurich "Tages-Anzeiger" already shows what press diversity looks like under the guise of Tamedia: newspapers with largely identical content appear under different titles. It is therefore all the more worrying that in its decision, the Competition Commission has even refrained from imposing conditions on the media company, which will in future dominate the whole of Switzerland, that could guarantee the independence of the editorial offices concerned.
No profitability at the expense of staff
As announced, "20 Minutes", the free paper launched by the Zurich media house to fight "Le Matin Bleu", will soon swallow up its former competitor from Edipresse. Once again, numerous journalists will be put out on the street. Together with the employees of Tamedia and Edipresse, Comedia will defend itself against the redundancies expected as a result of the takeover and is calling on Tamedia to completely refrain from dismissals in future and to guarantee everyone continued employment in the national company that has now been approved.

Following the decision by the Competition Commission to approve the merger of Edipresse's Swiss activities with Tamedia, the two media houses are merging their commuter newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland. The last edition of Le Matin Bleu in its current form will be published on Friday, September 25, 2009, according to a press release issued on Friday. The combined editorial team will then develop a new concept that combines the best elements of 20 minutes and Le Matin Bleu. The first issue of the joint commuter newspaper with the name 20 minutes will be published in November. The continuation of the name 20 minutes ensures the advertising combination with 20 Minuten in German-speaking Switzerland. At the same time as the launch of the new commuter newspaper, the design of 20 minutes in German-speaking Switzerland and 20 minutes in French-speaking Switzerland will be revised and expanded to include elements of the Le Matin Bleu design. From the beginning of 2010, 20 minutes will be published as Le Matin Bleu with the two regional editions Genève and Vaud. The circulation will be 210,000 copies. Printing will now take place at the Centre d'Impression Edi¬presse in Bussigny.
Serge Reymond, CEO of Edipresse Switzerland, will become Chairman of the Board of Directors of 20 Minutes Romandie S.A., in which Tamedia and PPSR will each hold a 50 percent stake. Joseph Crisci, previously Managing Director of 20 minutes, will take over as Managing Director. Tristan Cerf, previously Editor-in-Chief of Le Matin Bleu, will become Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper. Philippe Favre, previously editor-in-chief of 20 minutes, will take over as head of the online editorial team. According to the press release, the number of redundancies can be reduced to ten employees due to natural staff changes that have already taken place.
Consolidation of online platforms
In addition to the two commuter newspapers, the online classifieds markets will also be merged. Jobup Sarl and the holdings in the real estate platform Homegate.ch and the dating platform Swissfriends.ch will be merged into a joint classifieds organization as of 1 January 2010. The merger of the online job platforms Alpha.ch, Jobwinner.ch (Tamedia) and Jobup.ch (Edipresse) is intended to create a strong national job network for Switzerland. Jobup.ch is to be gradually developed into a national brand. Urs Hügli, previously CEO of Homegate, will take over the overall management of the new classifieds organization. Christoph Tonini, Head of Media Switzerland at Tamedia, will become Chairman of the Board of Directors of the online classifieds organization, in which Tamedia and PPSR will each hold a 50 percent stake.

The decision by the Federal Administrative Court to definitively deny the license to the Ringier-owned broadcaster Energy has angered publishers. He is dismayed and angry, said publisher president Hanspeter Lebrument at the annual conference of the Swiss Press Association in Interlaken on Friday, according to SDA. For the first time in history, a media ban has been issued by the state. For the many listeners of Radio Energy, this decision is simply incomprehensible, continued Lebrument. And the station's 60 employees wondered what they had done wrong. They were making a radio program that was well received.
Ringier is now focusing on digital radio
Publisher Michael Ringier was not surprised by the Federal Administrative Court's negative decision. Radio Energy will now see what can be done about the muddled situation. One possibility is to broadcast via digital radio (Dab). Other alternatives are also being examined. Moreover, in view of technological developments, radio licenses are likely to have been granted for the last time. According to Ringier, licenses will no longer be needed in ten years' time. Today, Radio Energy can already be received worldwide via the Internet. However, the court decision is serious with regard to the publishing house's media association. Ringier is well anchored in multimedia abroad. A strong home base is an important prerequisite for success abroad. The court decision will now also hinder Ringier here.

The long-established US newspaper Washington Post has reacted by stepping on the cost brakes to cushion falling advertising revenues. The paper will merge its print and online activities from the beginning of 2010. In a memo to employees, Post publisher and Media CEO Katherine Weymouth announced that the two divisions will be merged into one organization on 1 January next year. Once again, the industry has suffered a setback for quality journalism, as Pressetext writes. Most recently, the media group announced that it would be discontinuing its national weekly magazine altogether. Like the entire sector, the Washington Post has been hit hard by the crisis-induced advertising slump. This is also clearly noticeable in this country and is mainly reflected in the shrinking revenues of print media.

Google wants to penetrate the market for graphic banners by radically restructuring its online advertising exchange Double Click. The US search engine operator is thus putting pressure on Yahoo and AOL in particular, which have dominated this sector to date.
Double Click's new marketplace is to be linked to Google's in-house advertising systems Ad Words and Ad Sense, as the company announced on Thursday according to SDA. The company hopes that this will increase liquidity in auctions in which website operators offer free advertising space for sale. In addition, the new Double Click Ad Exchange will enable advertisers to better target their target groups.
The group bought Double Click at the beginning of 2008 for 3 billion dollars, beating out Microsoft and Yahoo. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently described display advertising as probably the next big billion-dollar business for the company. Until now, the company has mainly concentrated on text advertising, which appears alongside Internet search results. Yahoo operates the largest marketplace for online advertising with its subsidiary Right Media. Yahoo acquired Right Media in 2007 for 650 million dollars.

In its ruling, the Federal Administrative Court describes the licensing procedure for the Zurich private radio stations criticized by Radio Energy in its complaint as "legally compliant". The Uvek had rightly rated Radio 1 higher than Radio Energy. The decision was based on criteria such as working conditions or the variety of information on offer, but not the popularity of the program with the public, according to a press release from SDA. Against this background, the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport and Communications (DETEC) made a "proper, equitable and comprehensible" decision. Radio 1 was therefore rightly rated better than the losing broadcaster from the Ringier media group. The latter had argued in the appeal that it should be rated better in terms of enriching the diversity of opinion and offerings. This criterion was only decisive if the applications were to be regarded as equivalent. However, this was not the case. Even if this had been the case, Radio 1 would still have scored better according to the court.
Extended broadcasting area for Radio 24, Radio 1 and Radio Zürisee
A year ago, Radio 24 (Tamedia), Roger Schawinski's Radio 1 and Radio Zürisee (Zürisee Medien AG) were awarded a license for the Zurich/Glarus broadcasting area. Radio Energy (Ringier) was left completely empty-handed, especially as it had not applied for the small license for the greater Zurich area.The Federal Administrative Court's decision means that Radio 24, Radio 1 and Radio Zürisee will now receive a definitive new license. This goes hand in hand with an expansion of the broadcasting area. Radio Zürisee, for example, will in future be able to cover the entire cantons of Zurich and Glarus as well as parts of the cantons of St. Gallen, Schwyz and Aargau via FM. Thanks to the new Üetliberg transmitter site, the reception situation in the city of Zurich and the surrounding area will also be improved.
Five objections still pending
Five appeals against licensing decisions are still pending. It is unclear when the decisions will be made, as a spokesperson for the Federal Administrative Court told SDA on Friday. Three appeals against radio licenses are still pending. In the Aargau coverage area, Radio AG has lodged an appeal against the license for Radio Argovia. In south-eastern Switzerland, Radio Südost is appealing against the award of the license for Radio Grischa and in the Jura Arc, LuNE has lodged an objection against the license for Arc FM. Two decisions by the Federal Administrative Court are still pending for the regional television stations. In eastern Switzerland, Tele Säntis is complaining about the license awarded to Tele Ostschweiz and in the Jura Arc, Arc TV is disputing the license awarded to Canal Alpha.
Originally, there were more appeals. However, due to takeovers and the transfer of licenses, submissions to the court have been withdrawn, as Andrea Arcidiacono, spokesperson for the Federal Administrative Court, said on request.

Marcus Michelotti is stepping down as CEO of Dm.m on September 30, 2009 after eleven years of service. On October 1, 2009, 38-year-old Nicolas Sauvant (pictured left) will take over the operational management of the company as the new CEO. Marcus Michelotti will assist Nicolas Sauvant during a one-year transition phase and support him in all internal and external operational areas.
Nicolas Sauvant has been responsible for the Western Switzerland market area for Dm.m and AZ Direct for four years. He is an expert in classic direct marketing, bilingual and successfully completed his training as a certified fundraiser at the Association Management Institute (VMI) at the University of Fribourg this year, according to a press release.

Marcus Michelotti.