Dieter "Didda" Bohlen has signed a new advertising contract: After sausages and yogurt, the "Haudrauf" judge of the singing star show DSDS is now also advertising for Deutsche Bahn. As reported by Wuv.de, the commercial is due to be filmed soon. What is not known, however, is how much Deutsche Bahn is paying for the advertisement and why the state-owned company has chosen the man who washes his dirty laundry more publicly than anyone else in Germany.
Despite this, the Bild newspaper commented that Bohlen pulls better than any locomotive. However, the industry is not so unanimous about this. According to a survey by "Absatzwirtschaft", 54 percent of the marketing experts questioned consider Bohlen to be the riskiest advertising personality in Germany. 38 percent did not consider him credible, and 43 percent would never use him in an advertisement. Bohlen even filed a lawsuit against his former advertising partner Müller-Milch because the company prematurely released him from his advertising contract due to a foul-mouthed remark about buttermilk drinkers...

The submission deadline for the 56th International Advertising Festival in Cannes has been extended again, this time until April 24. The organizers of the festival are once again giving interested parties more time to submit their work, this time 14 days. The new deadline applies to all categories.

The Internet video portal YouTube and the music group Universal have announced a joint platform for music videos. The website will be launched in the course of 2009 under the name Vevo. The videos of artists who are under contract with Universal will be available on the site. These include stars such as U2 and Amy Winehouse. YouTube owner Google is providing the technology for the joint project.
The site will also attract music fans and advertisers with high-resolution videos and will be wholly owned by Universal. YouTube and Universal will share the advertising revenue, as reported by SDA. Google hopes that this will enable it to finally earn a lot of money with its highly popular video site. Allegedly, the companies also want to get other music groups such as EMI and Sony Music on board.
The collaboration is also set to open a new chapter in the often tense relationship between YouTube and media groups such as Universal, which have often complained about copyright infringements on the site. Google bought the popular YouTube platform in October 2006.

The Swiss Press Council wants to invite young journalists to its meetings so that its opinions are given more consideration in the everyday life of the media. This measure by the Swiss watchdog of the press is a further reaction to a study conducted by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in 2008, which found the Council to be important, competent and fair, but at the same time criticized the fact that the body was unable to play its role as a compass for the industry due to its lack of presence in internal discussions within the sector.
The young journalists should be regularly invited to the meetings, which normally take place in front of closed doors. The visit should also serve as training for the young journalists. The first of these meetings took place on March 6 in Lausanne.

The jury of the Zurich Journalism Prize has decided not to award Charlotte Jacquemart and Daniel Hug the 2007 Zurich Journalism Prize. This was awarded to them for an article campaign on the merger of Swissfirst with Bellevue Bank (see Return of the Zurich Journalism Prize 2007 demanded).
The media freedom campaign, which had called for the award to be revoked, was informed of the decision without any explanation, according to a press release. In an interview with Persoenlich.com, jury president Fredy Gsteiger justified the decision by saying that the overall performance of the research, which had drawn attention to certain abuses and problems, had been honored. It had still not been proven who was right in this matter.
According to the media freedom campaign, this is demonstrably untrue. Numerous investigations have shown that the allegations of bribery payments to pension fund managers and the accusation of damage to pension funds are false. A journalism prize was thus awarded to a piece of work that pilloried an entrepreneur without evidence and contributed to the demise of a successful company. It was appalling that the jury did not use a single word of regret. For Aktion Medienfreiheit, this understanding of journalism is reprehensible.
The jury's actions undermine the credibility of the institution of Zurich journalism in the long term and discredit all previous award winners, the statement continues. Aktion Medienfreiheit considers the president of the jury of the Zurich Journalism Prize, Fredy Gsteiger, and Christoph Born, member of the foundation board, to be no longer tenable.

As reported by the Financial Times Deutschland, the German TV group Pro Sieben Sat.1 wants to divest itself of a large part of its Internet holdings. The media group is currently looking for partners or buyers for the web network Lokalisten.de and Wer-weiss-was.de, among others.
A Group spokesperson is quoted as saying that the Group could imagine divesting itself of areas outside its core business if it could get a good price for them. ProSiebenSat.1 Executive Board member Marcus Englert has denied a sale of Lokalisten.de. "We would only sell non-core portals if a positive return could be achieved," he told the industry service Werben und Verkaufen. The Group's online holdings also include Reise.de, Wetter.com, Webnews, Autoplenum and Lovesearch.
Several interested parties have already come forward: In the past, the mobile phone company E-Plus, among others, was interested in Lokalisten.de. Axel Springer Verlag has taken a close look at Wer-weiss-was.de and Wetter.com, writes the Financial Times in its article. The only portal the TV group is reportedly determined to hold on to is Myvideo. The service is ideal for additionally evaluating TV formats on the web or advertising TV programs.
The Munich-based TV group Pro Sieben Sat.1 is largely owned by the financial investor groups KKR and Permira and has had high debts since the purchase of the SBS broadcasting chain a year and a half ago. In order to reduce the debt burden, the company is examining possible sales across all divisions.

Newsnetz also gained new readers in March. For the first time, the online network reached more than 2 million unique clients. This is according to the latest Net-Metrix figures from Wemf. Compared to the previous month, Newsnetz recorded growth of 17 percent. Since the relaunch of Newsnetz in August 2008, its reach has increased by over 48 percent.

During the Ice Hockey World Cup, the whole world is watching Zurich and Bern. In addition to sport, Lovely, the advertising heroine of Swiss milk producers created by the Ruf Lanz agency, is also taking center stage. Her message: milk makes for strong teeth. However, the cow doesn't need any words for this, but provides active proof in moving images. The new TV commercial can be seen on various Swiss TV stations from April 10 to May 10.
> To the spot
Responsible at Ruf Lanz: Danielle Lanz, Markus Ruf (CD), Dennis Maitzen (consulting), Lorenz Clormann (AD), Torsten Maas (text). Responsible at Swiss Milk Producers SMP: Charlotte Hofstetter (Head of Advertising & Media), Martin Rüst (Head of Advertising). Production: Brand film, Uli Scheper.

In June 2010, Europeans will for the first time use the Internet more often than television, which has been the most popular form of consumption to date. This was the result of the Microsoft study "Europe logs on: Internet trends of today & tomorrow".14.2 hours per week or 2.5 days per month, Europe's media users would then be online. Traditional television would only have 11.5 hours per week or 2 days per month at this point. However, Microsoft is giving the all-clear for TV content providers: TV is moving from the traditional television to the computer or other digital end devices. Even now, many 18 to 24-year-olds only own a computer and use it as a television. One in seven in this age group would only access videos on the Internet and no longer watch conventional television. According to Microsoft, TV will therefore in future refer to the content and no longer the type of consumption.

The Zurich Film Festival (ZFF) is once again making headlines. The three winning films each receive 20,000 francs. They also receive an additional 50,000 francs in promotional funding if the film finds a distributor in Switzerland. Two of the 2008 winning films already had a distributor: one of them is Blind Loves. The documentary film about love between blind people is being released in Basel and Lucerne cinemas these days. According to Bazonline.ch, the distributor was disappointed to discover that the entire prize money is tied to advertising on the TV channels Sat.1, 31 and Kabel 1. Apart from the fact that these three channels do not necessarily appeal to the same audience as a documentary about blind people, the whole thing is hardly worthwhile in other respects either. The two-minute theatrical trailer used by distributor Look Now to promote the film is too long for TV channels. A new, shorter commercial would therefore have had to be shot. But the effort and costs were simply too high, says Remo Bräuchi from Look Now. So they had to do without the funding.
The second winning film, which already has a distributor in Switzerland, is Tulpan, a feature film about a Kazakh shepherd. However, the distributor Filmcoopi has decided to make use of the television time and realize a TV commercial. It is expected to cost an additional 10,000 francs. Felix Hächler from Filmcoopi does not know whether there will be a single new viewer for Tulpan among the TV audience. Bräuchi and Hächler unanimously agree that the distributors would be better served by targeted cinema advertising, posters and flyers informing the interested public.
According to Bazonline.ch, Karl Spörri, director of the ZFF, regrets that the distribution funding is tied up, but the ZFF cannot offer 50,000 francs in cash. The deal with sponsor Cinecom has been agreed and is also binding for this year's 5th edition of the festival. And what will happen to the unused advertising time from Look Now? The ZFF has decided to give the 50,000 francs to the distributor Filmcoopi, which can now advertise Tulpan with 100,000 francs.

The Swiss private channel 3+ reports encouraging figures for the first quarter of 2009. Compared to the same period last year, the market share in the main target group of 15-49 year-old viewers in prime time rose from 2.8% to 3.9%. This corresponds to an increase of 39%.
This puts the channel ahead of foreign competitors such as ARD, ZDF, RTL 2, ORF 2 and Kabel 1 and puts it roughly on a par with ORF 1. In addition to purchased US series and feature films, 3+ continues to focus on in-house productions with a Swiss connection. The latest creation: the entertainment show "Die 10" with presenter Linda Gwerder, the second edition of which will be broadcast next week. The topic this time: "The 10 biggest scandals in Switzerland".