Germany's daily newspapers have once again lost readers. The papers currently reach a total of 46.3 million citizens, which represents a year-on-year decline of more than 600,000 people. This is according to the media analysis published in Frankfurt on Wednesday. This means that 71.4 percent of all Germans aged 14 and over read a newspaper every day. In 2008, 72.4 percent still did so. By contrast, the reach of magazines has remained stable. These reached 60.63 million people.
Among the current weekly magazines, Der Spiegel has expanded its reach. The news magazine is currently read by an average of 6.11 million people. This is 80,000 readers more than in the previous year. Focus has a reach of 5.35 million, which represents a loss of 360,000 readers compared to the previous year. The readership of Stern has remained unchanged with a reach of 7.47 million.
Media Analysis regularly determines the reach of magazines and daily newspapers in Germany. In the case of magazines, 39,000 people aged 14 and over were asked nationwide about their favorite reading material. Almost 140,000 people were interviewed to determine the reach of daily newspapers.

Bernard Baumgartner, a former member of the management team at the Swiss News Agency SDA, died last Wednesday on his 78th birthday in Bern. He spent his entire career as a journalist at SDA, as the agency writes. Among other things, he held the positions of head of the domestic department and the French-language service. He also served as editor-in-chief ad interim for one semester. After six years as a correspondent in Geneva, Baumgartner returned to Bern, where he worked in the SDA office in the Federal Palace until his retirement.

The Biel-Seeland region has gained an agency in the form of Kommunikationspunkt. Its core competence is Communication 2.0, according to a press release issued on Wednesday. Web 2.0 has become a mainstay of daily communication. Never before have communication channels been more diverse and direct. This development presents companies' communication experts with new challenges. The agency Kommunikationspunkt was created to provide support in this area. The right media mix is determined for each company and the instruments of traditional communication are optimally combined with those of Web 2.0.
The team consists of communications and PR consultants, journalists, copywriters, designers and production specialists.

Basler Zeitung Medien AG (BZM) will close the current 2008/09 financial year with a loss. However, Chairman of the Board of Directors Matthias Hagemann expects to be back in the black by 2010. BZM closed the 2007/08 financial year with a profit of CHF 7 million on sales of CHF 281.6 million. The next financial statements, which are to be presented at the end of August, will reflect the twelve worst months of all time. The result will be red, said Hagemann in an interview published in the Handelszeitung on Wednesday according to SDA.
However, the publisher of Basler Zeitung expects to return to the black in 2010, even if the coming year is even worse. Hagemann intends to achieve this with "massive cost-cutting measures" amounting to around 20 percent of total expenditure, which should have an impact in 2010.
In the interview, Hagemann did not give any concrete details about future cooperations of the Basler Zeitung, which have been the subject of speculation for some time. The publisher does not rule out the possibility of a domestic or foreign partner, and talks are underway. The purchase of a jacket section for BaZ has also become a real option for Hagemann if further savings have to be made. "Independence in the sense of splendid isolation is over," the BZM Chairman of the Board of Directors states.

The Basel-based insurance company Nationale Suisse commissioned the communication and design agency Art & Work and the PR agency Publicum to develop a target group-specific communication concept. To this end, the profiles of the various target groups were developed: "Women", "Families", "Architects & Civil Engineers", "Consultants & Administrators" and "Immigrants". The task of addressing each of these target groups and their sub-segments individually was solved using a carefully defined visual language and personalized texts, according to a press release.
The brochures are published in German, French and Italian and are used by insurance advisors throughout Switzerland to acquire new customers and advise existing customers. The customer approach is supplemented with direct mailings and other documents.
Responsible at Nationale Suisse, Basel: Bettina Lyner, Marketing & Communication Target Group Management; Marketing Switzerland, Adrian Lichtin, Head of Creation, Marketing Switzerland, Martin Schwald, Head of Marketing Switzerland. Responsible at Art & Work AG, Zurich: Carmen M. Schiltknecht (concept, CD and consulting), Tina Lechner (visual language and graphic design). Responsible at Publicum PMI AG, Zurich: Thomas Weber (concept and text). Print: Kreis Druck AG, Basel.

Cardinal sponsors various music festivals in Switzerland, including the Paléo Festival in Nyon and Rock Oz'Arènes in Avenches. The company is also involved in sport and sponsors HC Fribourg-Gottéron. According to a press release, fans will get their money's worth. In a first promotion, realized by the agency Startbahnwest, match tickets for HC Fribourg-Gottéron home games and instant prizes were up for grabs at the beginning of the year. The second promotion will run until the end of July under the motto "win & rock" - this time Cardinal is giving away tickets for the open-air festivals in Nyon and Avenches.
Startbahnwest realized all measures for Cardinal's two promotions, which covered the areas of below-the-line, POS, packaging and Internet for the catering and retail sectors.
Responsible at Feldschlösschen: Jérôme Rueff (Brand Manager). Responsible at Runway West: Denise Heusser (consulting), Yolanda Lopez (graphics), Natasa Maricic (text), Joely Tafanalo (DTP).

As the Goldbach Media Group announced on Wednesday, the Goldbach Index (Gemi) showed a drop of one index point to 184 in June 2009 across all media published by Media Focus. In the reporting period, however, e-media as a whole remained at 431.
Internet was able to increase advertising pressure by 15 index points to 476. TV was able to maintain its level of 437 index points, as was teletext with 157 points. Radio fell by one index point to 253 and the medium of digital advertising space (ad screen) suffered a loss of 43 index points to 219.
According to the press release, it should be noted when assessing the index that the twelve previous months are seasonally smoothed in the short-term view. Ringier's online media have also been included since June.

Final preparations have begun for the tenth edition of Screen-up on September 29, 2009 in Zurich's Kaufleuten. As in previous years, after the screenings of the individual channels, two topical specialist presentations and the Igem talk with the channel bosses will form the congress section. The first specialist speaker will be neuropsychologist and market researcher Christian Scheier. He is Managing Director of Decode Marketingberatung in Hamburg. Together with a team of experts, the Swiss native translates the latest scientific findings from neuropsychology into practice-oriented marketing tools.
A presentation by David Brennan will show how well television works in combination with other media. He heads the research and strategy department of the UK's largest marketing company Thinkbox. In the "Engagement Study", first published two years ago, the (multimedia) behavior of viewers in front of television became the subject of scientific research for the first time.
After the two presentations, the Igem Talk will conclude the congress section. Channel heads Dominik Kaiser (3+), Ingrid Deltenre (SF), Andreas Bartl (Managing Director of German Free TV) and Anke Schäferkordt (RTL Television) will discuss TV and its future under the moderation of Roger Köppel.
Screen-up is the only Swiss industry event for audiovisual electronic media and focuses on the future of the Swiss television market. Screen-up is organized by Publicitas Cinecom & Media, IP Multimedia (Switzerland), Publisuisse, RTL Group and Seven One Media (Switzerland). The new look for the tenth anniversary was created by Staeheli Kommunikation und Design.

Radio is the medium with the widest reach in Switzerland. As Publica Data shows in the radio usage statistics published on Tuesday, this statement can be made for all three regional language markets. In the first half of 2009, 90.3 percent of the population aged 15 and over in German-speaking Switzerland listened to the radio for an average of 133 minutes per day. Both reach and use of the medium are slightly lower in the other language regions: 87.4 percent of people in Suisse Romande listened to the radio for around 121.5 minutes a day. In Svizzera Italiana, radio reached 88.3% of the population and was used for 122 minutes per day.
The SRG stations have the highest figures in terms of reach, duration of use and market share (see table below). Within the SRG, DRS1 is in first place, followed by DRS 3 in second place. Among the private radio stations, the highest reach was measured for Radio 24, followed by Energy Zürich in second place and Argovia in third.

Data for German-speaking Switzerland, 1st semester 2009 (24h, Mon-Sun)

(Source: Publica Data)

Changes in methodology - direct comparisons with old data inadmissible
Three aspects have changed in the radio research system. The Radiocontrol sample had to be changed due to the new licensing areas for private radio stations. In addition, a period weighting was added to the daily weighting to improve accuracy and stability. Since the end of 2008, the Radiocontrol clocks have also been replaced by the successor model - the Mediawatch. The larger storage capacity allows more frequent measurements, which makes the measurements more accurate. Due to these changes, direct comparisons of the current semester data with older data are not permitted.

New mandate for Border Crossing. The Bernese PR agency is designing and supporting the "Yes to Harmos" referendum campaign in the canton of Bern for the referendum on September 27, 2009. The main subjects have already been developed. They show two laughing blond-haired siblings. The reason: most children are happy when they are finally allowed to go to kindergarten or school, according to the advertisers. With this message, the campaign aims to take the wind out of the sails of opponents. "They would undoubtedly put crying children in the foreground again," Mark Balsiger, managing director of the agency, is quoted as saying in the press release.

Responsible at Border Crossing: Silvia Aebi (AD), Nicole Gütiger (consulting), Mark Balsiger (CD).

On Tuesday, Plan Net Suisse launched an internationally oriented online campaign for its new client Tourisme Québec in collaboration with the Canadian media agency Cossette Media. The campaign promotes the Canadian province of Québec and its capital Montréal as a travel and vacation destination. It also draws attention to the new direct flight from Geneva to Montréal offered by Air Canada in collaboration with Swiss. In addition to holidaymakers, the campaign is also aimed at business people in the Geneva region who work for international organizations, for example.
The Zurich-based new media experts are responsible for online media planning and search engine optimization on Google. In addition to targeting, performance measures and regular standard advertising media, branding days are also used: The Tribune de Genève website was backed with a huge colorful wallpaper. In addition, advertising media were placed on various Swiss travel and news portals, including Travel.ch, Ebookers.ch, the travel section of Bluewin.ch, Romandie.com, 24heures.com and Lematin.ch.

Energy Zurich measures record figures. According to figures published by Publica Data, the private radio station recorded 277,000 listeners daily from Monday to Friday in the first half of 2009. In the advertising-relevant target group of 15 to 49-year-olds, Energy Zürich recorded 210,000 listeners in German-speaking Switzerland. This puts the station ahead of Radio 24 with 203,000 and Radio Zürisee with 152,000 listeners in this target group, as the radio station writes in a press release on Tuesday. The latest listener figures have once again strengthened Energy Zürich in its fight for a license for the Zurich-Glarus region.
The growth trend is also reflected in the latest web figures. According to Wemf's NET-Metrix internet research, the website recorded an average of 70,000 unique users and 262,000 visits per month in the first half of the year.