In January 2008, Swiss Television achieved a full-day average audience market share of 33.6 percent. Compared to the annual average for 2007, SF is thus up 0.1 percentage points. Compared to January 2007, however, this represents a drop of 1.5 percentage points, as stated in the SF press release. January and February recorded the highest all-day averages of 2007. Compared to January 2007, the daytime market share rose by one percentage point, which is mainly due to the great public interest in the ski races in Wengen, Kitzbühl and Adelboden. On prime time and late evening, where a drop of 2.6 and 2.3 percentage points respectively was recorded, the viewer magnet "MusicStar" was missing compared to January 2007.
 
SF's supplementary program offering on Sf.tv is seeing increasing use. The SF website recorded around 4,974,300 visits in January 2008. SF Sport is the most visited service in January 2008 with 1,581,200 visits. The number of visits per month on the sports platform rose by around 50 percent compared to the previous year's average.

 The Lausanne-based entrepreneur Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen has been honored with the "Saatchi & Saatchi Award For World Changing Ideas" for his water purification tool Lifestraw. The agency network awards the prize every two years for ground-breaking ideas worldwide. It is endowed with 100,000 dollars. Half of the sum is paid out in cash, the other half in the form of marketing support from Saatchi & Saatchi.
The award-winning Lifestraw system is a portable instrument for purifying drinking water, which can be used to eliminate bacteria and viruses. It consists of textile filters and chambers for chemical purification. The drinking tube lasts for a year and can purify around 700 liters of water. According to Bob Isherwood, Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, the device promises clean drinking water for more than one billion people.
The jury for the award consisted of the British physician and author Edward de Bono, the British musician Peter Gabriel, the Jordanian Prince El Hassan bin Talal, the British artist and fashion designer Malcolm McLaren, the American astrologer Carolyn Porco and the French designer Philippe Starck.

At the end of December, it was announced that Valais intended to market itself under the Valais brand in future (see ). The Valais brand was then formally adopted in mid-January. The absence of the name Valais in the unified logo triggered a storm of protest in the German-speaking Upper Valais. Now 6302 people have petitioned for the German name to appear in the logo alongside the French name Valais, as reported by SDA. The Valais Brand Association (VMV), which drafted the controversial brand strategy, intends to examine this request. The association announced on Tuesday that an investigation will be carried out to clarify how the Valais brand could be reintroduced. All organizations involved should be able to have their say. A decision will be made by the General Assembly.
The daily newspaper Der Bund sees the regional newspaper Walliser Bote in Brig as the ringleader of the Valais logo dispute. After deputy editor-in-chief Luzius Theler wrote the headline "Umbrella brand with roof damage" at the end of December, the regional newspaper only really got going in mid-January: The paper claimed that the French-speaking majority in the canton lacked the sensitivity in dealing with the German-speaking minority that these people would always demand at federal level in their minority role. In the slipstream of the committed newspaper, more and more people from the Upper Valais dared to say what they thought, Der Bund continued. Eight days ago, the politicians suddenly moved, which ultimately led to the Marke Valais association wanting to review its decision by means of an investigation.
Encouraged by their regional newspaper, the people of Upper Valais have achieved their goal, concludes Der Bund, referring to the discreet title in the Valais Messen on the eighth page: "Umbrella brand Valais - as desired by parliament".

 Following the Schaffhausen government, Thurgau is now also giving the private broadcaster Tele Züri the cold shoulder: it is campaigning for the Zurich-North-Eastern Switzerland region to go to Tele Top. It proposes Tele Ostschweiz for the eastern Switzerland region. In its statement, the Thurgau cantonal council first of all complains about the coverage areas drawn up by Bakom. It is not satisfied with the fact that only the two Upper Thurgau districts of Arbon and Bischofszell belong to the Eastern Switzerland area and the rest of the canton to Zurich-North-Eastern Switzerland. In the medium term, Thurgau is therefore calling for an adjustment of the areas.
The government council made its recommendations after "in-depth discussions" with Tele Top and its competitor Tele Züri. It came to the conclusion that Thurgau would be better off with Tele Top, as the broadcaster provides longer and better funded transmission windows for Thurgau, according to the statement. The experience that the station has gained in recent years with reporting on the canton of Thurgau also speaks in favor of Tele Top.
The cantonal government does not want to deny that Tele Züri has a pioneering role to play in the development of private television in Switzerland. However, the "professional way" of making television does not do justice to the conditions in Thurgau, according to the cantonal government. Tele Züri focuses "primarily on controversy, easily consumable snacks and personalization". More complex political topics, however, have less chance of being covered.
The government council also believes that the publisher-independent Tele Top is an enrichment for the diversity of offerings between Tele Züri in the west and Tele Ostschweiz in the east. The Tele Züri parent company Tamedia has a very strong position in the market, not only in the Zurich area. The government council is probably alluding to Tamedia's takeover of Thurgauer Zeitung in 2005, which caused criticism in Thurgau.
For the Eastern Switzerland region, the Government Council recommends awarding the license to Tele Ostschweiz. It is positive about the good cooperation between Tele Ostschweiz and Tele Diessenhofen, which should be intensified after any award of the license. The government council considers Tele Säntis' application, which, like that of Tele Top, was submitted by Günter Heuberger, to be "not mature enough".

 
Schawinski's Radio 1 station is getting a new addition with Tamara Cantieni. The 34-year-old will be on the air at the weekend, according to a press release issued on Thursday. Cantieni is a trained actress and previously worked for Radio Zürisee, Radio Z and Tele M1. As a listener, she had wished for just such a radio station and thinks it's great to now be part of it as a creator, she is quoted as saying in the press release.

Heye DDB Health Zurich has developed a campaign for the drug Caduet, which is also effective against slightly elevated cholesterol and blood pressure. This effect is symbolized in the ad motif by a crossbow with two arrows, according to a press release issued on Thursday.with the ads currently being placed in Swiss pharmaceutical media, Pfizer is clearly deviating from the international campaign in Switzerland. This places the cardiovascular risk patient in the foreground and thus focuses less on the product benefits.
The campaign shows how international messages can also be implemented regionally if required, said Bernd Hofmann, Managing Director of Heye DDB Health, in the communiqué.
 

The Lucerne-based visual communication agency Minz is further expanding its creative and consulting team. Fabian Gallati has joined the agency, which now has seven employees. The 31-year-old has several years of professional experience as a polygrapher. He is a proven specialist in the areas of pre-press, data controlling and image processing, and the agency also announced that it had developed a strategic communication concept for a new corporate image for the Brändi Foundation together with its partner Open up in Zurich. All communication documents, from the image brochure to the exhibition stand and the website, have already been realized.

  In its statement on the TV coverage areas, the Obwalden government expresses the view that both Tele Tell and Tele 1 are able to fulfill the performance mandate for a television license in their area. The application from Tele Tell comes from Peter Wanner's AZ Medien, while the application for Tele 1 comes from LZ Medien, which publishes the Neue Luzerner Zeitung.  
The Obwalden cantonal government writes that Tele Tell's good performance to date should be acknowledged. They represent a real track record. From a regional policy perspective, however, Tele 1 promises greater potential, as this station would be better anchored in Central Switzerland and would produce more independent programs for the region.

 Although the consultation deadline for radio and TV applications expired on February 20, some cantons have not yet commented on the issue. Thanks to an extension of the deadline, they can take even more time. These include Zurich, Lucerne and Graubünden. In the canton of Zurich, the matter is to be dealt with in the first week of March, as government spokeswoman Susanne Sorg told Werbewoche. Graubünden wants to respond by March 7 at the latest and in Lucerne the consultation response is to be put on the agenda next week.
In all three cantons, the statements are likely to be awaited with some excitement: There are more applications than there are licenses to be distributed. For example, both Tele Tell (AZ Medien) and Tele 1 (LZ Medien) have applied for the TV region of Central Switzerland. Both Hanspeter Lebrument's Radio Grischa and Radio Südost, in which Roger Schawinski, among others, has a stake, have applied for the radio license for south-eastern Switzerland. Tele Züri and Tele Top are vying for the Zurich-North-Eastern Switzerland TV region, and there is also competition for radio licenses in the Zurich area. It will be interesting to see what recommendations the three cantonal governments will make.

 In its statement, the Bernese cantonal government supports the license applications of the existing local radio stations and regional television stations, which affect seven local radio stations and the two regional television stations in the German-speaking part of the canton and in the Biel/Bienne region. The cantonal government is asking the federal government "to grant the licenses for these stations quickly and to distribute the planned fee shares", according to a press release issued by the Office for Information on Thursday.
The Government Council attaches particular importance to the applications from the two bilingual broadcasters Radio Canal 3 and Tele Bielingue. When assessing the licence applications from the new Arc jurassien coverage area, the cantonal government supports those of ARC FM SA and ARC TV.

 The Zurich agency Sulzer, Sutter has acquired the sports car brand Abarth, which belongs to the Fiat Group, as a new client. This will be launched as an independent brand in Switzerland from March, according to a press release issued on Thursday. Karl Abarth, an Austrian who emigrated to Italy, founded Abarth in 1949. Fiat took over the brand in 1973 and continued to run it for several years. As part of the new dynamic at the Fiat Group, the Abarth brand is now being revived. The first model to be launched on the market will be the Abarth Grande Punto.

 St. Gallen and Appenzell Ausserrhoden have also commented on the new licenses. The governments of both cantons favor Tele Ostschweiz as a regional television station in the Eastern Switzerland broadcasting area. For the radios, everything should remain the same. The St. Gallen government, like many other cantonal governments, has fundamental objections to the coverage areas: It would prefer the current situation with two competing TV stations. However, as there is only one license in the Eastern Switzerland broadcasting area, it supports Tele Ostschweiz's application. The license is linked to an annual fee share of a good two million francs.
According to the St. Gallen and Ausserrhoden governments, Tele Ostschweiz (TVO) provides a better public service in the region than the second applicant, Tele Säntis, which is operated by Tele-Top operator Günter Heuberger.
More up-to-the-minute informationThe governments also see it as positive that TVO intends to significantly expand its range of up-to-the-minute information. Like Radio FM1, the station belongs to the publishing house of the St. Galler Tagblatt. This reduction in journalistic diversity is problematic, writes the St. Gallen government. However, diversity of providers should not necessarily be equated with diversity of opinion.
There are no more applications for radio stations in Eastern Switzerland than there are licenses to be awarded. According to the St. Gallen government, everything is to remain the same. The current stations Radio Top, Radio FM1 (which emerged from Radio Aktuell and Radio Ri) and Toxic.fm are applying for the three coverage areas for local radio stations. Appenzell Ausserrhoden would like Appenzell to be given greater consideration in reporting.