Google is now allowed to photograph Swiss cities for its new Street View service. A 360-degree camera mounted on the roof of a car will record everything and everyone. According to the Sonntagszeitung newspaper, the Federal Data Protection Commissioner Hanspeter Thür has given his approval. The procedure has been criticized by Swiss data protectionists. The fact that Google uses software to make faces and license plates unrecognizable before publishing the images is not enough for them. The problem with Street View is that the anonymization only takes place afterwards, Beat Rudin, data protection officer for the canton of Basel-Stadt, told the Sonntagszeitung newspaper. Google stores the non-anonymized raw data on its servers, including abroad - according to spokesperson Matthias Meyer, in order to improve the anonymization software.
The Street View service is an extension for the Google Earth and Google Maps map services and is currently being prepared by Google in Switzerland. It offers users the opportunity to explore cities from a pedestrian perspective. Street View was launched in the USA in May 2009 and the service has been steadily expanding ever since. The USA, Australia and New Zealand are covered virtually nationwide. In France, England, Italy, Spain, Japan and the Netherlands, razor-sharp images of the largest cities are online. Images are currently being taken in eleven other countries, including Switzerland.

Media Minister Moritz Leuenberger is calling on the SRG to abandon the plan for a joint radio and TV director. "I am against a joint journalistic directorate for radio and television. The quality of both media must not be allowed to deteriorate," he said in an interview with Sonntagsblick. TV and radio should be in competition with each other and journalistic diversity should not be jeopardized. "But I am in favor of better coordination in the buildings or in the technical area," Leuenberger continued. This could save money.
While he rejects the Walpen plan for a joint radio and TV director, the media minister can imagine helping SRG to generate new revenue. The group is currently prohibited from advertising on its online offering. When asked in the Sonntagsblick interview whether the advertising ban should remain in place, Leuenberger said: "Nothing stays forever. I can imagine that SRG will one day be given permission to place advertisements."

The Zurich agency Apart is making a stronger start to the spring and is expanding its consulting and strategy division with Tobias Lang. Lang was most recently Head of Sales at Radio Energy Zurich. He previously worked in sales at Japan Tobacco International and in marketing at Feldschlösschen.
With a strengthened team, the agency wants to respond more specifically to the needs of its clients and also provide them with competent advice on strategic issues, according to a press release. Tobias Lang has been with Apart since the beginning of March 2009.

The church is going on the TV offensive: Cablecom has launched two new Christian channels. According to the Sonntag newspaper, the German Bibel-TV and the Austrian K-TV have been part of the program since 17 March. They are part of the basic digital service, so subscribers do not have to pay extra. However, religion and sect expert Georg Schmid does not expect the two new 24-hour channels to appeal to a mass audience. Like "Fenster zum Sonntag", he places Bibel-TV in the free-church spectrum. According to Schmid, around 200,000 people in Switzerland belong to a free church or sympathize with such an organization. K-TV comes from the conservative wing of the Catholic Church. The potential target audience could therefore be half a million people. However, it will be difficult for both channels to attract additional viewers.
Religious TV offerings are generally becoming more diverse, Schmid told Sonntag. Television is playing an increasingly important role for the churches. Church services broadcast on TV are particularly popular. There is also growing interest in the Swiss format "Fenster zum Sonntag", which is broadcast on Saturdays and Sundays on SF2. When it was launched in 1995, it attracted an average of 30,000 viewers per weekend. Today, the annual average is 70,000 to 80,000.

It was to be expected: Roger Federer is the nation's advertising darling. The tennis star could advertise almost anything. According to the Sonntagszeitung, this is shown by a representative survey conducted by the market research company Marketagent.com. He is not only the best known, but also the most competent, trustworthy, serious and elegant celebrity. Only on a few points do others come off better: Lara Gut is more youthful, Jennifer Ann Gerber has more sex appeal, Nadeschkin has more humor, and Stéphane Lambiel is more sensitive.
Unlike advertising icon Federer, who could encourage Mr. and Mrs. Swiss to buy a wide variety of products, many ex-mistresses fare differently: they are, surprisingly, only suitable for cosmetics and fashion advertising. Ski racer Lara Gut, on the other hand, could also be in front of the camera for banks, insurance companies or telecommunications, according to the survey, and Didier Cuche doesn't go down badly with people either. In general, athletes are more widely accepted than celebrities from the entertainment industry. So things look rather bad for the nation's heretic in terms of advertising: At most, Gölä can be imagined as an advertising medium for beer brewers. But many other stars and starlets in the Swiss entertainment sky are probably not born for advertising either - many even fail completely as potential advertising stars. Not so musician Stefanie Heinzmann and satirist Viktor Giacobbo (who, incidentally, has been rated as less humorous than ski racer Didier Cuche): Heinzmann could advertise for Fielmann glasses and Giacobbo for Swisscom. But that's it - clearly no chance of a dolce vita as an advertising star.

Migros, Switzerland's largest advertising client, is in dispute with the country's largest free newspaper, 20 Minuten: The orange giant will no longer advertise in the free newspaper until further notice. As a result, the Tamedia title will lose an estimated CHF 13 million in the printed edition and CHF 1 million in the online edition, as reported by Blick in Friday's edition. The reason for the business relationship being broken off for the time being is a wage dispute. However, negotiations still appear to be underway.
Migros writes that fairness is an important part of its values, "as we do not currently feel this in our business relationship with 20 Minuten, we have decided to refrain from working together until further notice." In contrast, Tamedia spokesperson Christoph Zimmer told Werbewoche: "Migros rejected an offer that we considered good and demanded a further concession. Our offer was good and fair. We regret that Migros did not accept our offer". Migros did not wish to comment further on the matter when asked.
Advertisements from Migros Denner not affected by the scandal
Zimmer also says that Migros has been made an offer that is better than the offers for all other companies in Switzerland. This is because increasing sales also means increasing discounts. "We recognize that Migros, as the largest advertising client, should also receive the best conditions." Zimmer denies the question of whether other Tamedia titles are affected by the dispute with Migros. "Such negotiations are an ongoing process. However, there are currently no comparable cases to the one between Migros and 20 Minuten."
The advertisements of Migros' Denner store are not affected by the scandal between Migros and 20 Minuten. "Denner plans and books independently," says Zimmer. He does not comment on the amount of advertising revenue of CHF 14 million that 20 Minuten is said to have lost according to Blick.
Unclear role of Migros media agency OMD Switzerland
The role of OMD Switzerland, Migros' new media agency appointed in December 2008, in this dispute remains unclear for the time being. What is certain is that there were no direct negotiations regarding advertising rates between the cooperative association and Tamedia, meaning that the eclat was resolved between OMD and 20 Minuten. Whether and to what extent OMD Switzerland exerted pressure on the rates or whether this was done on Migros' instructions remains to be clarified.
(elk)

The free newspaper Blick am Abend is to be expanded. The newspaper, which was launched in June 2008, will also be available in central and eastern Switzerland from August, as the Bieler Tagblatt writes in its online edition. The Ringier product was previously available in Zurich, Basel and Berne. According to a Ringier press release, Blick am Abend recorded 313,000 readers in the MACH January 2009 readership figures (special table Wemf).

The Swiss children's charity Terre des hommes and Schweizer Werbung SW are awarding the prize for exemplary advertising with children for the third time. The Child Guardian 2009 award will be presented on May 15, Advertising Day, in Chur. The Fédération Romande de Publicité et de Communication (FRP), the advertising association for French-speaking Switzerland, is taking part as an initiator for the first time. The Child Guardian is intended to launch a debate on the depiction and representation of children, as the initiators write in a communiqué.
The award-winning companies receive a symbolic prize, while the prize money of around CHF 10,000 goes to the child protection project "Powerful Influence" supported by Terre des hommes. A patronage committee is chaired by Christian Kauter, CEO of APG. The jury consists of personalities from advertising and communication as well as a children's rights expert and two 15-year-old children.

Five years ago, representatives of Swiss musicians and the SRG signed a joint charter. In it, the contractual partners confirmed their intention to promote Swiss music and its reputation at home and abroad. To this end, a platform for dialog was created to sustainably improve cooperation between the SRG and Swiss musicians. As a result of the voluntary charter between musicians, producers and radio representatives, the proportion of local music in SRG radio programs is steadily increasing, according to a statement from the SRG media platform. However, there are major regional differences: In Graubünden, the proportion of Swiss music is over 50 percent, in Ticino it is 10 percent. The dialog has proven its worth and further impetus following the example of the Internet music platforms Mx3.ch and Vxm.ch will follow, the press release adds.
With the "Swiss Music Charter", which was officially signed at the symposium in Fürigen on May 14, 2004, Swiss musicians, music producers and SRG SSR programmers are responding to the frequently voiced criticism that Swiss music is insufficiently represented on Swiss radio stations. The charter does not rely on a rigid quota solution, but on partnership-based cooperation when it comes to supporting local artists in their diversity.
At the M4Music festival in Zurich on Friday, the partners, who meet regularly to exchange ideas, drew a positive balance. SRG has proven to be a reliable partner in the area of Swiss music promotion.

The Munich-based publishing house Marquard Media is discontinuing the men's title Maxim with the May 2009 issue. The current economic crisis has hit the advertising market in the men's segment very hard, as CEO of Marquard Media Albrecht Hengstenberg explained to the industry service Kress. There is no longer any economic perspective for the magazine. Ten employees are affected by the closure.

According to Nielsen Media Research, Maxim's gross advertising sales in January/February 2009 amounted to EUR 938,000, around 25 percent less than in the same period last year. According to Kress.de, the magazine also lost significant ground in the distribution market following its relaunch in summer 2008. In the end, Maxim sold just over 100,000 copies.