The online portal of the Bernese daily newspaper Der Bund will be available from Monday evening, the 10th.
November 2008, in a new look. The homepage is part of the Newsnetz, which was launched on August 8, 2008 with the three partners Bazonline.ch, Bernerzeitung.ch and Tagesanzeiger.ch. The design of the new homepage is based on the appearance of the daily newspaper. In terms of content, the portal offers readers a much more comprehensive range of news, according to a press release issued on Monday. In the four blogs "Zum runden Leder", "Kultur statt Bern", "Ausserdem" and "Bund-Blog", the Bund editorial team comments on events and developments. Content from the printed newspaper and regional information supplement the articles and multimedia contributions from the Newsnetz editorial team.
Regional editors are responsible for local news in Basel, Bern and Zurich. The online team at Der Bund in Bern is headed by Manuel Gnos, who was already responsible for Derbund.ch.
The journalists in the Zurich-based editorial team are responsible for all national content. This is headed by editor-in-chief Peter Wälty. The national Newsnetz advertising market is managed by Dominik Lämmler. Together with the publishing house and regional partners, Newsnetz has around 60 full-time positions.

Christian Schirmer is now going on the road as a copywriter and concept developer. In future, the former employee of agencies such as McCann-Erickson, Lesch+Frei, JWT+H+F and Euro RSCG will be offering his services as a freelancer. The 42-year-old is now making information about himself and the campaigns and advertising material he has designed available on the Freelanceschirmer.ch website.

Ringier board member Christiane zu Salm is turning her back on the German media company Hubert Burda Media. The former MTV and Neun-Live boss and current head of the cross-media division only joined Burda in April. She was responsible for improving the link between print and online and had developed an offer and marketing platform for the company. The official reason given for the termination of the employment relationship is that zu Salm wants to "focus more on her own entrepreneurial activities in future and will move the center of her life to Berlin", according to a Burda press release published by the industry service Horizont. Publisher Hubert Burda himself spoke of a "personal decision that we very much regret but accept". Zu Salm will now work as an external consultant for Burda for another year.
According to Horizont, the return of board member Philipp Welte to Burda is likely to be closely linked to his departure. After Welte's return, who most recently built up the central marketer Media Impact at Springer, the responsibilities at Management Board level were not specified for a long time. Among other things, there was probably a need for discussion regarding responsibility for the marketer Burda Community Network. Welte and not Salm was to be given responsibility at Management Board level. In future, Welte will be responsible for expanding the company's cross-media activities.
zu Salm will retain her position on the Board of Directors of the Swiss media company Ringier. On the board, which is chaired by Michael Ringier, the German will sit with Vice Chairman Uli Sigg, Oscar Frei, Jan O. Frøshaug, Hans-Olaf Henkel and the new addition Martin Werfli .

The media consulting agency Vizeum Switzerland has strengthened its consulting team. Mario Buchmann is the new head of customer care at Vizeum.
Buchmann has been working in the communications industry for 11 years. Prior to that, he worked in consulting units at advertising agencies such as AY&R and Mc Cann-Erickson. Five years ago, he switched to the media industry. In his previous position at Optimedia, he already looked after international clients.

Star TV has a number of new programs for the new year: Following its success with live broadcasts in prime time, Star TV will expand this area with even more sports and entertainment events, CEO and owner Paul Grau told SDA. To this end, Star TV has already submitted an application to Bakom for "must carry" distribution.
Since the beginning of the year, Star TV has been broadcasting sports events such as football, the Red Bull Air Race, beach volleyball, ice hockey, bobsleigh, car racing and boxing live in prime time alongside feature films. In 2009, events from the fields of football, cross-country skiing, snowboarding, sailing, golf and mountain biking will also be broadcast under the motto "Sport that moves Switzerland". According to Head of Marketing José Fernandes, Star TV offers sports organizers and associations an important platform to achieve the desired visibility and reach for their sports.
Star TV is also expanding the entertainment sector. Since the beginning, the national private channel has been broadcasting live from the Locarno Film Festival, the "Rusty Paragraph" and "Prix Walo" award ceremonies, among others. The James Bond premiere in November 2008 was also broadcast live from the red carpet in a two-hour program. New plans include broadcasts of other Swiss film festivals, cinema previews, fashion shows and award ceremonies in the fields of entertainment, politics and business.
In future, virtual and real sport will be combined on the Game TV channel. Combinations of interactive and real sporting events are planned in order to bring athletes and gamers closer together. An application for "must carry" distribution is also being prepared for Game TV.

The Graubünden government is not the lifeline for the Rhaeto-Romanic daily newspaper La Quotidiana. The preservation or discontinuation of the paper is solely in the hands of the publisher, Südostschweiz Mediengruppe, the executive announced on Monday in response to a question from the cantonal parliament.
It is the task of the state to create the necessary framework conditions for such a product. It does not want to intervene in the market to "distort competition". The government also sees no possibility of commissioning the state-financed Rhaeto-Romanic news agency ANR to publish the newspaper. Nor do the political and legal requirements exist to oblige a private publisher to publish a newspaper.
Südostschweiz publisher Hanspeter Lebrument wants to produce La Quotidiana more cheaply or possibly only publish it once a week. Negotiations have been underway since mid-September to keep the paper as a daily newspaper.
The possibility of bringing the editorial offices of the Rhaeto-Romanic news agency ANR and the daily newspaper La Quotidiana closer together in order to achieve synergies is currently being examined. The Romansh daily newspaper, which has been published since 1997, is ANR's main customer.

Success for the online network of Switzerland’s largest daily newspapers: Three months after its launch, the Newsnetz network—comprising the *Basler Zeitung*, *Berner Zeitung*, and *Tages-Anzeiger*—ranks first among Swiss media websites. This is shown by the Net-Metrix figures for the month of October, compiled by AG für Werbemedienforschung.
As Dominik Lämmler, Head of Advertising, reported on Monday evening, Newsnetz recorded approximately 1,638,000 unique clients last month. This represents an increase of 135,000 unique clients, or about nine percent, compared to the previous month of September. Newsnetz is now 11,000 unique clients ahead of Blick Online, 24,000 unique clients ahead of 20 Minuten Online, and 55,000 unique clients ahead of NZZ Online. The month of October brought strong growth to all news sites due to the financial crisis and the U.S. elections. Dagesanzeiger.ch alone grew by 12 percent this month, thereby increasing its reach by 200,000 unique clients—or more than 20 percent—since its relaunch, Lämmler continues.

The latest James Bond adventure achieves the most successful Swiss launch weekend of all time. Since its release on November 6, "Quantum of Solace" has already attracted 300,000 visitors.
The Bond film celebrated its Swiss premiere in Emmen on November 4 in the presence of director Marc Forster and producer Barbara Broccoli. "Quantum of Solace" is being shown on a total of 175 screens throughout Switzerland. In the 22nd Bond adventure, Daniel Craig is on the hunt for the man he blames for the death of his lover in the last Bond film "Casino Royale".

The Maxomedia agency has created a new homepage for Auto Zürich. The relaunch took place just in time for the "Auto Zürich Car Show", which takes place this year from November 13 to 16 at the Zurich Exhibition Center. The modern design of the website is in gray and black. Clear navigation should make it easy for visitors to find their way around the site, the agency wrote in a press release. The collaboration between Maxomedia and Auto Zürich began last spring and is not limited in time. Following the relaunch of the website, a further expansion of the web presence is planned for the 2009 trade fair season, the press release continued.

Xing, the operator of the network for business contacts, was able to increase its membership figures by 53.6 percent to 6.53 million within the last twelve months. This led to record sales: In the third quarter, Xing was able to increase its turnover by 86 percent to 9.18 million euros. In the same quarter of the previous year, revenue amounted to 4.94 million. Continued strong member and revenue growth and the high scalability of the business model led to the highest earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA margin) of the year at 40 percent, the German company wrote in a press release on Monday. Net profit doubled in the first nine months to 4.72 million euros.
Xing, which is listed on the stock exchange, is thus further expanding its position as Europe's professional online network. Xing recorded growth of 151,000 paying members in the first nine months of the year. As a result, the number of Premium Members exceeded 513,000 as of September 30, 2008. In the core business of Premium Memberships, revenue increased by 60 percent from 20.06 million euros. The number of direct connections - from members to other members - amounted to 110 million, which corresponds to an increase of 70 percent compared to the previous year.
According to Xing, the new business models introduced at the end of 2007 are already making a significant contribution to the increase in sales. In the e-commerce and advertising segment, the network operator achieved additional sales of 4.8 million euros for the first time.
The rapid rise in user numbers is partly due to the fact that since the beginning of the financial market crisis in summer 2007, more and more professionals have been networking online in order to find new business partnerships or to further their career planning, the Xing press release continued.

Innovations in the film industry: As was announced last week, Google is planning to set up a channel on the video platform YouTube where complete films can be consumed free of charge. The online giant has now found its first major partner. Metro-Goldwyn Mayers (MGM) is the first major Hollywood studio to show full-length feature films on the network. As Pressetext reported on Monday based on information from Cnet, MGM will probably not be the only film studio to cooperate with YouTube in this respect. Lionsgate, for example, had already agreed on a partnership last summer. However, this cooperation has so far only included the provision of short clips and film excerpts.
"The agreement with MGM will include full-length feature films as well as series and excerpts from popular productions," explains Henning Dorstewitz, press spokesperson for YouTube at Google Germany, to Pressetext. However, the service will initially only be available in the USA. It will mainly show archive material. "But it won't just be old classics, more recent films will also be included," says Dorstewitz. The new project will be financed by advertising revenue, which will be split between Google and the cooperation partners. YouTube had already agreed a similar collaboration with the US broadcaster CBS in October.
The partnership with MGM could mean a fundamental turnaround for Google in its strained relationship with Hollywood. Until now, film studios and the IT group have often been at loggerheads over copyright issues. Time and again, protected content has been and continues to be uploaded to YouTube by users. Although the platform has now introduced a program that detects copyright infringements and removes the films in question, the entertainment industry is not satisfied with this solution.
It is not yet known what the agreements between Google and MGM actually look like. Usually, YouTube's cooperation partners receive a 70 percent share of the advertising revenue. It seems likely that other film studios will be interested in the planned feature film project. However, a small obstacle could be Google's commitment to a specific advertising format, as reported by informed circles. According to the press release, some studios already fear that users will not accept the commercials to the extent that they will make the broadcast profitable.