115,000 people have signed a declaration of solidarity with the Roman daily newspaper La Repubblica. Italian head of government Silvio Berlusconi is demanding a million euros in compensation from the newspaper for its reports on alleged sex affairs and wild parties. According to SDA, the declaration was initiated by three respected Italian lawyers. They accuse Berlusconi of intimidating the free press with his claim for damages in order to silence them. In doing so, he is endangering media freedom.
The background to this is the "ten questions" to the head of government published daily in a box by the Roman newspaper, which he considers defamatory. In the list of questions, La Repubblica wants to know, for example, when Berlusconi met the young Noemi Letizia, whether he had or has had contact with other minors and what forced him to "not tell the truth" for months and to provide four different versions of the "Noemi case". The question also asks about Berlusconi's reported meeting with a call girl and whether this could make him vulnerable to blackmail as head of government. The tenth question is aimed at how his health is after all this.
Declaration signed by the following personalities
The lawyers' appeal was signed by renowned personalities, including the writers Umberto Eco, Andrea Camilleri and Roberto Saviano, the Nobel Prize winner for literature Dario Fo', the director Bernardo Bertolucci and the singer Adriano Celentano.
Last week, Berlusconi sued several European newspapers for their reporting on his private life. Legal proceedings had been initiated in Italy, France and Spain, and lawsuits in Great Britain were still being examined, Berlusconi's lawyer Nicolo' Ghedini said on Friday.

Basel journalist Tilman Renz is the new head of information at the FDFA/FDEA Integration Office. The 40-year-old will take over from Adrian Sollberger on Tuesday, as the Integration Office announced on Monday, according to SDA. After seven years at the Integration Office, Sollberger has been Deputy Head of Communications and Head of the Media Team at the FDFA since July 1.
After training as a journalist, Renz was a member of the Federal Parliament management team at the Basler Zeitung from 2000 to 2004, then editor in the news department at Baz and most recently team leader for Switzerland.
The 42-year-old Peter Nelson will become Deputy Head of the Information Division. The diplomat has previously been deployed by the FDFA in Bern, Addis Ababa, Cairo and most recently Tokyo.

Stephan Suter, Managing Director of Adlink Internet Media Switzerland since November 1, 2007, is leaving the online company of the Goldbach Media Group by mutual agreement as of August 31, 2009. After a total of eight years, characterized by great commitment to the company, the separation is due to different strategic views, according to a press release issued on Monday.
Martin Radelfinger, responsible for business development at the Goldbach Media Group and founder of Adlink Internet Media AG Switzerland, is taking over as Managing Director with immediate effect.

Seven One Media is expanding its commitment in Switzerland. In addition to the program windows on Pro Sieben and Sat.1, the company will also operate its own program window on Kabel Eins. According to the press release, this will include a daily weather program specifically for Switzerland. The program will be produced by the Group subsidiary Wetter.com. The Swiss weather show can also be seen in the program windows of Sat.1 and Pro Sieben with immediate effect.
This provides sponsoring customers in Switzerland with a cross-channel combined offer for Sat.1, Pro Sieben and Kabel Eins. The on-air presence is also combined with an online presence on Wetter.com.
The weather program will be broadcast six times a day: at 3 p.m. on Pro Sieben, at 4:10 p.m. on Kabel Eins, at 5 p.m. on Sat.1, at 6:10 p.m. again on Pro Sieben, at 7:10 p.m. on Kabel Eins and at 8 p.m. one last time on Sat.1. "We are confident that this service will meet viewers' need for regional weather reports," said Mike Gut, Director Programming at Seven One Media, in the press release.

On Monday, August 24, dog kennels barricaded with boards were set up in the cities of Zurich and Lausanne. TBWA\ZÜRICH came up with this idea to draw attention to a campaign by Pedigree in collaboration with the Swiss Animal Protection STS. "Help us to help dogs" was the slogan of the campaign, which aimed to support shelter dogs so that they can receive the best possible care. Around 10,000 dogs end up in animal shelters in Switzerland every year. In addition to divorce, illness or allergies, it's mainly after the summer vacations that cute little friends are deported to the shelter, who come to Switzerland out of pity and then become a burden at home.
The TBWA\Zurich awareness campaign, which has now been launched in time for the end of the vacations, is intended to raise further funds to support dogs in the animal shelters of the Swiss Animal Protection STS. The dog kennels can be purchased at auction on ricardo.ch, with all proceeds going to the Swiss Animal Welfare STS. In addition, Pedigree will donate five centimes from the sale of each pack of Pedigree during the period from mid-August to mid-September to the STS.
Responsible at Mars Schweiz AG: Marc Schmidlin (Category Director Petcare), Bettina Kammermann (Group Brand Manager Dog Care). Responsible at TBWA\ZÜRICH: Matthias Kiess/Manuela Zwald (Responsibility/Unit Management), Frederick Rossmann (CD), Werner Schellenberg (AD), Magnus M. Sambo/Peter Bietenholz (Text), Laura Grümann (Graphics), Marjeta Morinc (DTP), Charlotte Stampfli (Consulting), Agnes Meier (Production/Print), Heimstätten Wil/Streuplan AG (Producer/Logistic).

Star TV has a new website. From now on, current programs can not only be received via analog and digital TV sets or IPTV (Wilmaa and Zatoo), but can also be viewed on Startv.ch. According to the private broadcaster, the individual magazine programs will also be archived so that they can be watched at a later date. This and the complete overhaul of the site's content are the most important new features of Star TV's Internet presence, according to the statement. In a further step, the primetime "Live Event" programs will be streamed live on the Internet from mid-September.
The implementation was realized by the company Netlive IT in Teufen, which was already responsible for the web presence of the Trailer Cinema Highlights was responsible.

With the help of an American model, in future it will not only be possible to carry out precise analyses of customers' purchasing behavior after watching an advertisement. The aim of the new system from the USA is also to identify customers who switch between brands - the so-called "brand swingers". According to Pressetext, the new model for TV ratings analysis has been implemented by a consortium of media companies such as Disney, Viacom, News Corp and Discovery Communications. Information on the viewing behavior of around 2.1 million cable TV customers or 1.5 million households is first retrieved. This is done with the help of information from the set-top boxes. With the help of the TRAnalytics system, which was developed by the media research company TRA, this information is then linked to a database that records the purchasing behavior of 370,000 households using customer cards. The interesting thing about this is that advertisers can now track exactly how many viewers go into a store and buy the drink after watching a Coca Cola commercial on TV, for example. In addition, consumers who switch between brands, so-called "brand swingers", can also be identified in this way. At least that is the aim of the consortium of media companies. However, such analyses would raise more questions than they provide answers, Volker Nickel, spokesman for the German Advertising Association ZAW, told Pressetext. If a viewer of the commercial then goes into a store to buy the advertised product, this does not necessarily have to be due to the commercial. In addition, such an analysis could lead to data protection problems. Who would want Migros to know exactly which condoms, candles and red wine were bought on which day based on the Cumulus card? Considering the plethora of data protection complaints received by Google Street View just days after its launch, one could conclude that this model for analyzing quotas may not gain a foothold in Switzerland any time soon.
The first commercials created by MediaVest, a subsidiary of the advertising group Publicis, to test TRAnalytics will probably run on the Discovery Channel and TLC this fall, according to Pressetext. Procter&Gamble, Kraft and Coca Cola are said to have commissioned the commercials, reports the industry magazine Advertising Age.

pressetext.ch

The cooperation negotiations between Swisscom and Sankt Galler Stadtwerke regarding the construction and operation of a fiber optic network in the city of St. Gallen were successfully concluded on Friday. Both partners agreed on a joint approach in order to avoid duplication of work during the expansion, minimize construction costs and provide the city of St. Gallen with access to the new fibre optic technology more quickly.
After around six months of intensive negotiations, the partners have agreed on the joint expansion of a fiber optic network. Several optical fibers will be laid per household. The construction of a fiber optic network is necessary in order to be able to meet the bandwidth requirements of companies and private households, i.e. the desire for even faster Internet access, in the future. Both partners announced at the beginning of 2009 that they would be providing the city of St. Gallen with a fiber optic network.

City of St. Gallen: Own fiber optic network planned

www.swisscom.ch

On October 15, some private radio stations in German-speaking Switzerland will launch into the digital future - with DAB+. In view of developments abroad and the trend toward Internet radio, however, no one at Radioday wanted to talk about a historic moment. "Is the launch of DAB+ more like the Titanic or the moon landing - I don't know," said a skeptical Jürg Bachmann, President of Swiss Private Radio. But there were also confident voices. For example, Walter Rüegg, Director of Radio DRS, who described himself as "optimistic, but not euphoric. After all, his former medium-wave radio station Musikwelle, which has been broadcasting on cable and DAB+ since the end of the Beromünster MW station, now reaches nearly 250,000 listeners. And the youth station Virus, which has always been receivable only via cable and DAB+, has 80,000 listeners. In addition, according to Rüegg, there are 300,000 devices on the market today that can receive DAB+. By the end of the year, there will be 400,000.
Günter Heuberger, President of Swiss Media Cast, a consortium of DAB interested parties (private and SRG), was also hopeful. In German-speaking Switzerland, he said, the DAB+ network, which allows better reception quality and diversity, would be fully developed by the end of 2010. "And even if this standard doesn't catch on - we certainly won't go under with DAB+," he said.
However, the Radioday began with a small provocation: Despite fee-splitting for smaller radio stations, the federal government supports the large stations economically far more than the small ones, claimed Bakom Director Martin Dumermuth in his opening presentation. His reasoning: "If we were to assign radio frequencies to the highest bidder in each case, as in the telecom industry, a large area without fee-splitting would achieve higher revenues than a small area with splitting." But since all licensees now receive their radio frequencies free of charge, it is obvious that broadcasters with large licenses profit more economically, even if they do not receive fee-splitting.
The head of Bakom also explained that his office no longer carries out a large part of the quality control required by the RTVG itself, but has delegated it to the radio stations themselves and to external companies and universities. These would check every two years whether the stations were fulfilling the performance mandate of the federal government. This is done by observing the programs and examining the organizational structures and working conditions. The evaluation offices appointed by Bakom then draw up a report with suggestions for improvement. Within three months, the radio stations must then communicate what they intend to implement and by when. If a broadcaster refuses to do so, in the worst case it could have its license revoked. "But we assume that repressive interventions by Bakom will be the exception," Dumermuth said. Whether the system proves itself can then be discussed at the 20th Radioday.
During the first visits to the radio operations, the radio people met her very skeptically, Magalie Modoux from the evaluation company Certimedia in western Switzerland later reported in a panel discussion. "But our goal is not to control, but to support," she said. The radio representatives on the podium agreed with her and described the visits and talks as "valuable coaching", for which, however, they have to fork out 15,000 francs each. In response to criticism that the checks are merely snapshots for which the radios can dress up, Modoux replied glibly: "No, we don't just take a photo, we also open the cupboards." Whether and how quickly this would translate into perceptible quality - and thus perhaps into higher ratings - was something she could not answer.
Quality was also an issue in another respect: in the question of how radios can keep the so-called digital natives, young people who have grown up with digital technology and the Internet, in line. Professor Urs Gasser from Harvard University advised radio stations to distribute their content on various channels (FM, Internet, podcast) and to build communities. Interactive elements are also important so that listeners can help shape the content. Digital natives, however, have a relatively poorly developed sense of quality when it comes to information. This is precisely where a radio station with an editorial team can step in and provide guidance, as long as it has strong personalities in its team of presenters. But if young people don't question the quality of their information, how can a radio station involve them editorially without losing its own credibility? Gasser didn't know the answer to this question either.
Markus Knöpfli

On September 1, 2009, Jörg Heynen will take over the management of Dimando Marketing & Medien in Schaffhausen. He succeeds Dr. Peter Kohlhaas who, after a year as interim manager of the new subsidiary, is concentrating on the management of Dimando in Zurich again. After studying economics at the University of Bern, which he completed with a master's thesis on the factors behind successful succession planning in SMEs, Jörg Heynen gained experience abroad in Mexico and the USA and worked for the HR Services division of UBS in Stamford and New York. Most recently, he managed the development and implementation of the new web platform of the KV Education Group Switzerland.
Dimando is active in project and process development and supports customers along the entire process chain in the development of new services as well as in sales.

www.dimando.ch

Coruba importer Haecky Drink & Wine is using the hype surrounding the appearance of popular sprinter Usain Bolt at the athletics meeting in Zurich to promote its brand. The fastest man in the world and the Rum Coruba brand have one thing in common: both are real Jamaicans. The BSSM advertising agency developed an advertisement for this, which appeared in the national Sunday press together with the coverage of the meeting.
Responsible at Haecky Drink & Wine, Reinach: Mike Böhler (overall responsibility). Responsible at BSSM Werbeagentur, Basel; Urs Schneider (CD), Daniel Bard (AD), Hannes Müller (text), Markus Binggeli (consulting).

www.bssm.ch