Beat Leuenberger is the new regional sales manager for Axel Springer Switzerland's TV magazines with immediate effect. The 43-year-old will assume responsibility for the Central Plateau and Central Switzerland region, the media company announced on Tuesday. Most recently, Leuenberger was Account Director at Publicitas Publimedia in Basel.

A Zurich Journalism Prize will be awarded again next year. Applicants can now submit their entries. There are four categories: Articles in newspapers (Newspaper Prize), articles in journals or magazines (Magazine Prize), articles by media professionals who have not yet reached the age of 30 (Young Talent Prize) and a prize for the overall work.
Each of these prizes is endowed with a sum of CHF 10,000. The closing date for entries is January 15, 2009, and contributions that have been published in a print medium in the cantons of Zurich and Schaffhausen are eligible. Works will also be accepted if they are by authors who are mainly active in these cantons.

The direct marketing agency Alex Schmid Direct has designed a launch campaign for the new Limited Edition of Gauloises. The agency was inspired by the theme of the big city for the implementation of the brand message "Liberté toujours": The dazzling pack design is meant to mimic the fast pace of international world metropolises, hitting "the core of cosmopolitan consumer insights," the agency writes in a media release.
The aim is to combine target group-specific activities, sales support measures, events and branding through an SMS&WIN mechanism. This is intended to ensure acquisition and customer loyalty.
The campaign will use exclusive Collection Box mailings for collectors, 3D cards for new customers, a multi-stage email permission campaign, online promotions, SMS flights and various trade activities.

Responsible at Gauloises: Fabiana Falce (Junior Brand Manager). Responsible at Alex Schmid Direct: Dominik Buser (design), Sara Meier (text), Sabrina Bjöörn, Daniela Schmid (consulting).

The filmmakers represented by the Syndicat Suisse Film et Vidéo (SSFV) are entering into negotiations with film producers with the demand for a 5% wage increase. This is primarily intended to compensate for the inflation of recent years. In 2007 and 2008 alone, inflation totaled 3.3 percent, as the SSFV stated in a communiqué on Friday. Even in previous years, wages in the film industry were unable to keep pace with inflation.
Inflation over the last five years has amounted to 16.1 percent, while the salaries of film professionals have only increased by an average of
8 percent. The SSFV criticizes the fact that the increase in funding for Swiss film production since 1993 has not had an impact on wage development.
Three associations are involved on the employers' side: The Swiss Association of Film Producers (SFP), the Group of Authors, Directors, Producers (GARP) and the Association of Swiss TV, Commissioned and Commercial Film Producers.
SFP President Lukas Hobi admitted at the request of SDA that wages in the film industry were lagging behind inflation. However, this does not only apply to the professional groups represented in the SSFV, but to all of them. However, Hobi does not accept the argument of increased funding. Although there is more money for Swiss films overall, the budgets of the individual films have not necessarily increased as a result.
In the film industry, there has been a social partnership between the producers' associations and the SSFV for thirty years. Working conditions and wages are regularly negotiated by the Joint Commission. The first round of the new wage talks is scheduled for November 25.

Change at the Berner Zeitung: Publishing director Franziska von Weissenfluh is retiring from operational business at the Berner Zeitung and the Bund at the end of the year. She will become a new member of the Board of Directors of Espace Media Groupe. There, the 48-year-old is to take over the Vice Presidency at the next General Meeting.
Charles von Graffenried remains Chairman of the Board of Directors and Publisher of Espace Media Groupe. In addition to the current Vice Chairman Pietro Supino, Bernhard Bratschi, Martin Kall and Iwan Rickenbacher continue to be members of the Board of Directors.
Franziska von Weissenfluh joined the then AG for the Berner Tagblatt in 1988 as Head of Public Relations and Promotions. Two years later, the qualified publishing businesswoman took over as Head of Sales Marketing at the Berner Zeitung and was appointed Publishing Director in 1993. In 1996, she additionally took over as head of management at Berner Zeitung AG and from 2003 was instrumental in the successful integration of the Bund, Tamedia wrote in a press release on Monday. On Sunday, rumors emerged that Tamedia was planning to discontinue the newspaper Der Bund.

Anyone who wanted to ask the Wikipedia oracle for advice over the weekend came away empty-handed. The German homepage of the online encyclopedia was blocked. The reason for this was a Wikipedia article about Bundestag member Lutz Heilmann. As the controversial left-wing politician felt that entries about his person violated his personality and damaged his reputation, he quickly filed a lawsuit against the Wikimedia Deutschland association. The entry was related to his Stasi past. On November 13, his demands were heard by the judges. The German portal to the Wikipedia world was blocked for around 24 hours with a temporary injunction. A small consolation for all Wikipedia fans: Heilmann apologized to the users of the encyclopaedia for the interruption on his personal website. He said he was in no way concerned with censorship, but simply with presenting true facts. We can only hope that Wikipedia users will be spared such horror scenarios in the future.

(Image: This is what the Wikipedia.de website looked like on Saturday).

Swiss Television is not commissioning a second season of the medical series "Day and Night". In a press release issued on Monday, SF writes that the series has not met with the audience interest it had hoped for. According to Rainer Schaper, Head of the Culture Department, the series has lost interest among all audience groups since it was first broadcast.
Last Friday's broadcast still achieved a market share of 16.3 percent or 267,900 viewers, as SF spokesman David Affentranger explained when asked by SDA. In comparison: The first broadcast was watched by 497,000 viewers, which corresponds to a market share of 31 percent.
From January 4, 2009 until the end of the first season, the medical series will be broadcast on Sundays at 6.10 p.m. on SF 1. From January 9, 2009, SF will be showing in-house produced documentary series in the current slot of "Tag und Nacht". Emergency in Davos" will be the first.
The tragedy of the story: the doctor series was recently showered with praise. The critics only criticized the poor sound and - above all - the poor broadcasting slot. Perhaps Swiss television made a somewhat rash decision.

The strike at the Neuchâtel daily newspapers L'Express and L'Impartial has been declared over. On Sunday evening, the 46 members of the editorial teams present decided to resume work.
This was after the editors of the two papers had received assurances from the publisher SNP of new negotiations with a serious examination of the short-time working proposed by the editorial teams. This was one of the three conditions that the strikers had set for a resumption of work.
For its part, the publisher, the Société neuchâteloise de presse (SNP), made it a condition that the representative of the journalists' association Impressum be replaced during the negotiations. A new round is scheduled for Monday morning. The publishers' side demanded that the strike be called off. If work is not resumed, Jacques Richard, the representative of the French SNP owner, will not appear at the negotiating table, it said in a letter to the editorial offices.
Reduction plans prompted the editorial staff of the two Neuchâtel daily newspapers to go on strike on Friday evening. The management had rejected the proposals for short-time working. This was intended to avoid the planned redundancies in the editorial department.
A week ago, the SNP, which belongs to the French media group Hersant, announced cost-cutting measures of around two million francs and a total of 15 job cuts. This corresponds to 20 percent of all editorial positions.

As of January 2009, Philippe Meyer will serve as Managing Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Simko's Geneva office. In close coordination with Chairman Pedro Simko and CEO Kaspar Loeb, Meyer will be responsible for the further development of the international and national business in Geneva.
Meyer has worked for various agencies in recent years, including Matter Leo Burnett, Publicis, McCann and most recently as Managing Partner at Exxtra Kommunikation. He has gained management experience both in French-speaking Switzerland at McCann and in German-speaking Switzerland. As Senior Account Director at Publicis, he had worked closely with the then Publicis CEO Kaspar Loeb.

Many Americans only find out about world events in the form of late night shows. It may be that the programs of Jon Stewart ("The Daily Show") or Bill Maher present a very one-sided and distorted version of current events - at any rate, they offer entertainment that even the good European late-night talkers have not yet managed to provide. And they are not afraid to pick up the really hot potato. This year, 52-year-old Maher has also taken one of these to the movies. The presenter of the show "Real Time with Bill Maher" on the popular pay-TV channel HBO is currently making himself the new Michael Moore with his film "Religulous". His film, which is critical of religion and based on the premise that religions are stupid and useless, is currently causing quite a stir. "The subject is basically taboo in the USA. I wanted to ask representatives of various religious groups questions that nobody normally asks," he told the Tages-Anzeiger, which recently printed a longer interview with Maher. He also asks the questions again and again on his show: on the last Friday he tried to embarrass rap star and entrepreneur Sean "Diddy" Combs by asking whether he really owed everything to Jesus. He can't let it go.

SRG must standardize its management at the behest of the Uvek. The regional language companies, such as Swiss Radio DRS or Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR), are to hand over powers to the Director General and the SRG Board of Directors. This means that in future the regional council committees will no longer be able to elect the directors and top executives of their business units themselves, but will pass on their election proposals to the SRG Board of Directors. Accordingly, the directors of the SRG stations will report to the Director General, who in return will no longer have a seat on the regional council committees.
The planned changes to the structure are set out in a reform paper that has already been approved by the SRG Board of Directors. On November 26, this is to be presented to the delegates of the sponsors, SRG spokesperson Daniel Steiner confirmed a report in the NZZ on Friday.
The reason for the changes to SRG's corporate structure is the new concession granted just under a year ago, which requires a "clear separation of powers", Steiner told SDA. In future, the Board of Directors will be responsible to the licensing authority for SRG's performance, and no longer the Director General as was previously the case. This should prevent double subordination, he added.
However, the sponsors in Bern, Fribourg, Valais and Eastern Switzerland rejected the paper. The associations in Zurich, Basel and Central Switzerland demanded corrections. According to Steiner, the rejection was not accepted, but the other societies were accommodated one step further. For example, the regional companies' say in the program concepts had been strengthened again. In addition, the regional council committees would largely have sovereignty over the distribution of the financial resources allocated by the SRG Board of Directors. If the paper fails at the Assembly of Delegates despite adjustments, the SRG will have to seek talks with DETEC.
As early as 2006, the Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO) stated in its report on SRG that SRG's decentralized structures created a deficit in efficiency. The structures, with the ownership, overall company, business units and shareholdings, were too complex.
However, SRG did not accept the criticism two years ago. The decentralized structures were a strength in terms of state policy and customer proximity, it said at the time.

With the previous SPR+ measurements, it was only possible to find out how many passers-by go into a train station or shopping center and how many come out again. What happens inside the complex buildings, however, was previously unclear. The new station study by SPR+ now aims to crack this black box and find out how passers-by move around inside complex buildings and where they encounter posters. The aim is to reveal the performance values generated by the posters that are displayed there. In Switzerland, around 25 percent of all posters are displayed in closed buildings.
For indoor measurements, SPR+ relies on trained people rather than technology. This is because the geostationary satellites used for outdoor studies are shielded by the building shells and therefore cannot be used to measure pedestrian flows inside buildings. From September to December 2008, experienced counting personnel from the market research institute IHA-GfK will be working in Swiss railroad stations, shopping centers, parking lots and petrol stations. Using smart phones, they will count the number of pedestrians walking past them at the intersections within the buildings, separated by direction. What sounds simple is a complex matter in practice. In Zurich's multi-storey main station, for example, there are 115 different junctions at which passers-by can branch off. Once you have passed through one of the entrances inside the building, you can even choose from a total of 140 different routes (see graphic below).
The frequency data resulting from the measurement campaign is incorporated into a route model and thus enables the simulation of pedestrian flows. This task will be carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems, which specializes in mobility analyses and is already being used in the outdoor model of SPR+. The station study will be used to incorporate the performance values of billboards in closed buildings into the SPR+ Expert planning software next year, SPR+ writes in a press release.

Caption: Route model Zurich main station.