While Swiss television recently decided against a children's channel, MTV Networks is now launching the first Swiss children's channel Nick Schweiz. The program with internationally successful series and a few Swiss in-house productions is scheduled to start on April 1. The Nick channel will be financed by advertising and will take over the previous broadcasting slot of Viva Switzerland. The children's channel was launched in Germany in 2005 and has already achieved a 10 percent market share there, according to the Sonntagszeitung newspaper.
The program of the music channel MTV will also change. From April 1, the previously German program with Swiss commercial breaks will be tailored to the Swiss audience.

Recently, it's not just politicians who have been swept up by the Facebook wave, but also secret services. The contact network stores vast amounts of personal data. The same applies to the Google Internet portal, whose service also includes storage space for files, an agenda, an e-mail account and a personalized user profile. Analysis software can use this data to create very precise personality profiles, as the Swiss Federal Data Protection Commissioner Hanspeter Thür told the NZZ am Sonntag. According to Thür, data can also be accessed by Swiss authorities. Suspicion of a criminal offense is sufficient for such information to be released. HR managers also use such information to find out about applicants. Data protection experts estimate that up to two thirds of HR departments use the internet for additional research. And last but not least, government agencies are also interested in the almost unlimited rights to use, process and pass on content and data, as the NZZ am Sonntag continues.
But Facebook fever continues to spread. To date, a quarter of the 200 members of the National Council have already created their own profile on the portal, as Sonntag writes. And with no small response - Lukas Reimann (SVP) and Christian Levrat (SP) already have over 1000 profiles among their Facebook friends.

In the programme "SF bi de Lüt - Heimspiel" from August 2008, live trout were misused and instrumentalized as toys. This was decided by the Independent Complaints Authority for Radio and Television (UBI). The complaint, which was upheld, complained about a game of catch with farmed trout. By 5 votes to 2, the panel deemed this to be indecent and therefore contrary to programming law.
The UBI also classified the "Erotic Nigth" program broadcast on Switzerland 5 in November as indecent. The complaint by the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) was unanimously approved. The UBI rejected three other complaints. The reasons will be published on the Internet in the coming weeks.

The publicly listed US publishing group around the New York Times has
has canceled its dividend for the first time in four decades in view of its financial problems. The traditional group is feeling the effects of the newspaper crisis ever more keenly and has seen its profits slashed in half due to falling advertising revenues.
According to SDA, the New York Times Company had already massively reduced its dividend in November. By discontinuing the payout, it will save another 34.5 million dollars per year. The move gives the Group more leeway in view of the uncertain outlook, as publisher Arthur Sulzberger announced on Thursday evening. The group currently wants to divest itself of investments in US baseball, for example. The recently built headquarters in the heart of New York is to be sold and leased back.
The group also includes the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune.

The delegation of the Bund Rescue Committee met with representatives of Espace Media and Tamedia and asked them to examine options for preserving the Bund. For example, the move towards a weekly newspaper or a purely online newspaper.
Tamedia and Espace Media were not very optimistic about a short-term solution. They explained that they were not aiming for "therapy for the next twelve months", but wanted to make decisions with a timeframe of ten years. After the daily newspapers had lost 11 percent of their sales in the last 15 years, the publisher Tamedia assumed that the decline in advertising sales and readership would continue. This is mainly due to commuter newspapers and the Internet.
From the perspective of Espace Media and Tamedia, all of their media must be economically independent. However, this has not been the case with the Confederation for at least twelve years.

Greenpeace Switzerland has relaunched the community platform Lovepeace.ch and is now inviting people to actively participate on this portal. Every week, a campaign is launched that is linked to a specific goal. In this way, Greenpeace aims to promote the sustainable use of resources. The current campaign calls on people to switch off their computers overnight. Users receive so-called Ecco points for doing so. Those who have collected enough points receive an award.
The weekly campaigns are supported by blogs and video contributions. Greenpeace is now planning to network with other platforms for further development. For example, a Facebook application is to be launched in the coming weeks, as Greenpeace announced in a press release.

This week, the Bild newspaper launched a competition under the motto "Bild dir deine Werbung" ("Create your own advertising"). Readers can send in their ideas for an advertisement for the tabloid via the Internet. All the materials required for an advertisement or promotional film, such as software, soundtracks, logos and the Bild jingle, are available on the media company's homepage.
A professional jury consisting of five publishing and advertising experts will decide on the designs. The winners will receive a total of 60,000 euros, as the NZZ writes on Friday. The aim of the campaign is to promote creative advertising. At the same time, the aim is to strengthen the bond between the newspaper and its readers.

Petra Kreussler, Daniel Bruengger and Pius Walker are this year's Swiss representatives on the jury of the Cannes International Advertising Festival. They will be judging work from all over the world in the "Media", "Direct" and "Promo" categories from June 21 to 27, 2009.
Petra Kreussler, CEO of the Generation Media AG, will judge the works in the "Media" category, Daniel Bruengger, Managing Director of the agency Bruengger Bachmann Dialog AG, will judge the "Direct" category and Pius Walker, Creative Director of the Walker advertising agency, will judge the works in the "Promo" category.
Petra Kreussler has been the owner and CEO of The Generation Media AG agency since 2001. Prior to that, she worked for many years at the media agency Robert C. Baier Inc, most recently as CEO. Over the past five years, her agency has always been among the top three media agencies according to the Media Trend Journal ranking.
Daniel Bruengger founded the communications agency Bruengger Bachmann Dialog together with Remo Bachmann in 2007. He previously worked as Managing Director at Lowe Direct. In addition, Daniel Bruengger has been a regular jury member for the Swiss Dialog Marketing Award since 1999 and in 2008 he was a member of the international jury for the John Caple Award in New York.
Pius Walker founded the advertising agency Walker in 2003, before that he worked for various companies throughout Europe, including Jung von Matt in Hamburg, Scholz & Friends in Berlin and Leagas Delaney in London. He has already won numerous awards, including the D & AD, The One Show Pencil and four
Cannes Lions. In 2008, he was voted Advertiser of the Year.

The Cannes Advertising Festival is taking place for the 56th time this year. Golden Lions are awarded in the categories "Film", "Press", "Outdoor", "Media", "Cyber", "Direct", "Radio", "Titanium and Integrated", "Promo", "Design" and "PR". The official representative of the IAF (International Advertising Festival) in Switzerland is Publicitas.

On Friday, the Audience Council praised the Swiss television program Kassensturz and Focus on Radio DRS3. The journalistic work and the moderation received broad recognition. However, there is still room for improvement on a small scale.
The Council classified Kassensturz as an "important program with high everyday utility for consumers". A majority of the Audience Council is of the opinion that Swiss television needs the program, which deals with consumer topics, everyday tips and product tests. The formal journalistic realization of the programme convinced a majority of the Council. The moderation was particularly impressive. The internet presence was also rated as very good. However, money topics, or tariffs and prices, dominated too much for some Council members.
The Focus background program met with a positive response from the Audience Council, particularly due to the broad selection of guests, in-depth discussions and good moderation. The broadcast length of 60 minutes is considered reasonable by the majority. The Internet presence, which is currently being revised and improved, was judged by the Council to still be somewhat spartan.

The Zurich agency Evoq has hired Tobias Kaspar as its new copywriter. The trained typographer worked for six years at TUI Suisse, Wirz Identity and Switzerland Tourism. Before that, he studied journalism for seven semesters, worked as a freelancer for the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper and wrote PR texts as a freelancer.
Evoq's customers include Ringier Print, SBB Switzerland and the University of Zurich.

Petraea Heynike has been promoted to Executive Vice President at Nestlé. The 60-year-old will be responsible for marketing and sales as well as Nespresso at the Swiss food company. This is the first time a woman has been promoted to the top management level at Nestlé.
Heynike has worked for the Group for 36 years. She is currently responsible for the confectionery business. Prior to that, she was CEO of Nestlé Canada, among other things.
Her predecessor Lars Olofsson moved to the French retail group Carrefour in November.

Alpenmedia, a publishing house based in Vienna and London, will take over "Hotelspiegel" on March 1, 2009. Publishing director Joachim Schwarz explained that the company already has a direct link to Switzerland through the titles "Swissgazette" and "Bülacher Zeitung". This step would exploit synergies and further expand their presence in the tourism sector. The glossy hotel review will now be published monthly rather than weekly.
The "Hotelspiegel" crew will be supported by the combined Alpenmedia editorial team, which will also include marketing and logistics. No jobs will be lost, as the publishing house further announced in a press release.