The feature film "The Friend" by Micha Lewinsky has been awarded the main prize of the 2008 Zurich Film Awards, worth CHF 20,000, at the Winterthur Theater on Thursday evening. At the film awards ceremony, the Zurich City Council honored five films and one film distributor on the recommendation of the film commission.
In addition, director Martin Witz will receive a "Succès Zürich" funding credit for the development of new projects with his film "Dutti der Riese".

With the takeover of the Biel-based BNS Group by Telag Company, a member of the Premium Communications Group, the Thurgau-based group of companies plans to further expand its position in the Swiss customer care market. BNS employs around 300 people at its Biel site.
According to Peter Weigelt, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Telag Company, all BNS jobs are to be retained. Due to the strong growth of the Group, he assumes that additional capacity will also be required at the Biel site in the short term, Weigelt wrote in a press release on Friday. Following the integration of BNS, the Tägerwilen-based Premium Communications Group will have around 3,000 employees. The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.
With the Biel location, the Premium Group is gaining a fifth location in Switzerland after Tägerwilen, Zurich, Lausanne and Mendrisio. In future, the BNS Group will be managed as a subsidiary of Telag Company AG, Zurich. With the acquisition of the BNS Group, the Premium Group's business volume will increase to over 100,000 customer contacts per day. Committed to the motto "We speak your language", the Premium Communications Group is the only provider in the European market to offer customer service in 21 languages from a single location.

The SRG Audience Council has praised the children's radio program Pirando and attested Swiss television a good performance on US election night. The Council found the Saturday evening program Happy Day entertaining. However, the Audience Council also makes suggestions for improvement for all three programs, as can be seen from its statements published on Friday.
Happy Day was simply too long, and more musical interludes would do the show good. A number of audience council members found the appearances of companies and sponsors in the show offensive, and said that particular restraint was required here.
The Council followed the US election night on SF and also compared it with the German-language channels ZDF, ORF and RTL. The ZDF program came out on top in the assessment. SF ranked second ahead of third-placed RTL and ORF. The graphic implementation could and should be improved.
The Council has nothing to criticize about the daily children's programme Pirando on DRS 1, and the Internet offering for the programme is downright impressive. What needs to be improved, however, is the promotion of the program, the Audience Council continues.

The Basel-based software company Day is considering the sale of its UK subsidiary Marketingnet. Day is no longer able to offer profitable services with Marketingnet, the company announced on Thursday, according to SDA.
Marketingnet mainly offers agency services such as web design. Since the takeover in 2000, the agency market has consolidated, which has led to ever lower margins, according to the press release. Day does not provide business figures for Marketingnet.
By separating from Marketingnet, Day would be able to concentrate more on its core business. The software business managed by Day in the UK would not be affected by the planned restructuring.

The newsnet is stepping up its efforts to generate advertising revenues: At the beginning of 2009, Stefano Buzzi will join the online network as Deputy Head of Advertising Market. In this role, he will work with Head Dominik Lämmler to further expand the advertising market.
The 33-year-old began his career as an interviewer at Harry's Research Center in London. He then moved to the consulting department of an advertising agency in Lausanne. From 2001 to 2006, he was responsible for online advertising sales at TicinOnline SA in Lugano. Most recently, Stefano Buzzi was international sales manager for the Tilllate Group.

After the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is now also hitting the cost brakes. According to Horizont.net, the management has decided on a cost-cutting program of ten percent. The works council and employees were informed this week. Spokesman Josef Krieg did not want to confirm the amount of the savings to Horizont.net. Although precautionary measures had to be taken from a commercial point of view, the company did not want to proceed "with a lawnmower".
According to Horizont.net, it is uncertain whether the ten percent will be enough. The works council is said to have been informed that further steps would be necessary should the advertising business develop even worse than expected. The financial and automotive sectors in particular are currently giving German daily newspapers a hard time.
Layoffs for operational reasons are not yet an issue. However, vacant positions are unlikely to be filled at present. As was announced on Wednesday, the long-standing business editor Christoph Noack is moving to Air Berlin as press spokesman. Spokesman Krieg gave Horizont.net the all-clear, at least in part. The company will not be driven crazy by the crisis. Nothing will be done that could damage the quality of the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

The Zurich-based agency Hesskiss has once again created a Christmas campaign for FCZ this year. Once more, the campaign promotes the blue-and-white Christmas ornaments that fans of the Zurich soccer club can hang on their trees. In addition, an FCZ Advent calendar is being offered for sale. Both items are available at the FCZ fan shop.
Responsible at FCZ: Christian Müller (FCZ Marketing Manager). Responsible at Hesskiss: Roland Hess (CD), Meo Giger (graphic design), Dieter Boller (text), Nathalie Zeller (consulting).

Publisuisse has redesigned the Media Guide 2009. It offers a general overview of all relevant advertising media in Switzerland and conveys the most important facts about the various media in a value-neutral manner, according to a statement issued by the SRG subsidiary on Thursday. It contains a "multitude of data on the (TV) advertising market, on the planning and implementation of advertising campaigns, on intermedia comparisons and on cross-media issues". The guide is aimed primarily at communications managers at advertising companies as well as consultants and media specialists at agencies.
Publisuisse's new image brochure "Publisuisse - macht mehr draus" is published at the same time as the Media Guide. After a brief introduction on media and the advertising market, it highlights the importance of electronic media and presents Publisuisse's competencies and portfolio.

The Sonntagszeitung will be published in a slightly different layout from next Sunday. The redesign is intended to improve reader guidance and give the newspaper more freshness and a new design dynamic, according to a press release issued by the Tamedia publishing house on Thursday.
The previous rigid design from 2005 with six newspaper columns will be broken up. The new basic grid, which also allows two-column columns, commentaries or short news items and uses more white space, should make it easier to weight topics, the press release continues. Overall, the new concept provides more scope and variety within the new newspaper bundles of the Sonntagszeitung.
The use of the confederation colors will also be adapted. Concise color bars on the newspaper header of each bundle will differentiate the theme bundles even more clearly from one another. The color will be picked up and continued on the following pages. This means that readers can always tell at a glance which newspaper group they are in.
The Sonntagszeitung will continue to be published in nine volumes in the usual order. The title and basic fonts as well as the names of the thematic bundles will be retained. The regular extras such as Real Estate, Kaufrausch and Money will appear in a uniform design from 2009 under the name "10".

The Hamburg publishing house Gruner+Jahr is discontinuing the personality magazine Park Avenue, which was launched in 2005, after the publication of issue 1/2009, as the publishing house announced on Wednesday evening. The titles Life & Style in Russia and Gala in the Netherlands will also disappear from the market. A total of 35 jobs in the publishing and editorial departments will be cut as a result.
Just a day ago, it was announced that G+J intends to close the locations of its magazines "Capital", "Impulse" and "Börse Online" in Cologne and Munich and establish a new central editorial office for business topics in Hamburg. As a result, the publishing house is cutting a further 60 jobs at the business titles. In future, all three magazines, as well as the daily newspaper Financial Times Deutschland, will be produced by the new editorial team of 250 people.

The Swiss press is suffering from dwindling advertising revenues: In October, they again fell sharply by 12.0 percent year-on-year to CHF 179.6 million.
Income from job advertisements fell by 8.5 percent to 20.6 million francs, as Wemf announced on Thursday. There was an 18.0 percent drop in real estate advertising to 6.7 million francs.
In the most important advertising category, commercial/other advertising, the decrease amounted to 13.8% to CHF 139.3 million. Only brochure inserts recorded an increase, rising by 10.1% to CHF 13.0 million.
The most important media category, the daily press, received 15.3% less advertising revenue than in October of the previous year. The regional weekly press, the Sunday press, the financial and business press, the general press and the specialty press also recorded a decline. Only the trade press saw an increase (+15.9 percent).
Several media companies have already reacted to the slump in recent days. For example, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Aargau media company AZ Medien have announced job cuts.

The traditional Wirz Cocktail took place yesterday evening for the 38th time. Around 300 guests from the worlds of communication and business accepted the Wirz Group's invitation to a panel discussion entitled "Rituals and their significance for marketing". Individual and universal rituals were discussed by Karin Frick, Head of Research at GDI, Dr. Christian R. Gisi, who manages the traditional jewelry house Bucherer, Urs Riedener, CEO of Emmi Switzerland, and Pastor Dr. Christoph Sigrist, who preaches at the Grossmünster church in Zurich. Patrizia Laeri from Swiss television moderated the panel discussion.

Urs Riedener, Dr. Christoph Sigrist, Patrizia Laeri, Karin Frick, Dr. Christian R. Gisi, Geri Aebi (Chairman of the Wirz Group Executive Board).