Roger Schawinski's station Radio 1 is bringing two more female voices on board with Birgit Orgler and Irena Ristic. The 39-year-old Orgler was most recently head of news at Radio Argovia; the 31-year-old Ristic currently works for the commuter newspaper Heute and has worked as a freelance journalist for NZZ, among others. With the two of them, the editorial team will soon be complete, as the station announced. Radio 1 will start on January 14 with a test program. The official start of broadcasting is on March 17.

 Despite all the prophecies of doom, Swiss publishers are convinced that the paid-for daily newspaper has a future. In their eyes, free newspapers have opened up new markets. "Commuter newspapers are not the gravediggers of the paid daily press. Nor are they the panacea for the future," said Pietro Supino, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Tamedia publishing house, at the Epiphany Conference of the Swiss Press Association
on Tuesday in Zurich. As with traditional newspapers, quality craftsmanship and a clear journalistic concept are decisive for success. He does not see a cannibalization of paid newspapers and free papers, said Supino, whose publishing house now publishes two free papers.
Peter Rothenbühler, editor-in-chief of the western Swiss newspaper Le Matin, sounded the same note: he rejected those who predict the slow death of the purchased daily newspaper. "What kind of industry are we? I can no longer stand the eternal complaining and defensive attitude," Rothenbühler shouted into the hall. Newspapers are still the number one in the press market and they are profitable.
Of course there is a certain cannibalization between paid newspapers and the free press, as the example of Le Matin and Matin bleu shows, said Rothenbühler. But it was much less than many had expected when the free paper was launched.

 Swiss Sports Television (SSF), which is now cooperating with Star TV, will in future be present on Mondays and Wednesdays with prime-time sports programs on the lifestyle channel. Sport will also be on the program at weekends. Live broadcasts of the Challenge League, the second-highest Swiss football league, are to become the real flagship of sports television. Football broadcasts are planned from mid-February, as Pascal Jenny, Managing Director of United Sport Production USP TV, the company behind SSF, told the media in Schlieren on Tuesday.
A digital channel will also be launched at the beginning of March. Among other things, it will show reruns from the analog offering as well as additional, previously recorded live sports programs. An Internet TV channel is also being planned.
SSF currently produces various sporting events, including bobsleigh races, handball and beach volleyball matches. Until now, SSF content has been broadcast on the U1 channel. As this channel is under threat of being banned from the analog service, SSF can be seen on Star TV from January 11 (see
). Star TV has a place in the analog program guaranteed by Cablecom. The sports television channel will continue to focus on popular and fringe sports, as announced at the launch last year. In Star TV, the company has found a partner that can provide added value beyond the actual sporting event, Jenny continued. Paul Grau, Managing Director of Star TV, sees the cooperation as an opportunity to professionalize the sports sector.
Previously, sport was mainly associated with lifestyle, for example in the weekly "Freestyle" format. Live reporting is now being added. Thanks to Star TV's focus on lifestyle topics, Grau wants to give sport "faces and shine" and present it in a dusted-off way, namely through talks and background reports.

 After many years as a senior consultant and member of the management team at Burson-Marsteller, Peter Eberhard has set up his own business. With his agency PEPR Peter Eberhard Public Relations, the 58-year-old wants to focus on personal and sustainable consulting for clients who require pragmatic communication solutions with a fair price/performance ratio. PEPR's core services include corporate communications, crisis communications, financial market communications (regular and ad hoc publicity, transaction support), editorial/text and communications coaching for industrial and service companies. Eberhard announced on Tuesday that he relies on partners for certain tasks. Prior to his agency activities, the new entrepreneur had headed the press and information office of Swissmem, the umbrella organization of the mechanical engineering industry, for several years.

Tanja Mülhauser joined In Flagranti's consultancy team at the beginning of the year. She is moving from the Swiss industry leader to the agency in Lys. She first completed a one-year internship at Publicis and then worked as a marketing communications planner. At In Flagranti, she will mainly work for Postfinance and DC Bank.

 
Two residents of Rapperswil-Jona are using their website to call on people in the area to campaign for the continued reception of TeleZüri. On Wir-wollen-telezueri.ch, they are opposing the new territorial division by Bakom, as reported by the Tages-Anzeiger. As a result of the new division, their area will no longer belong to the Zurich-North-Eastern Switzerland regional television reception area and will therefore no longer be able to receive TeleZüri. The new regulation is to apply from spring 2008 and, in addition to the Linth region, will also affect the cantons of Schwyz and Glarus, which will then be assigned to Eastern and Central Switzerland respectively. With their campaign, the two initiators want to persuade the Federal Council to rethink the territorial division because their region is strongly oriented towards Zurich. The mayor of Rapperswil and a St. Gallen cantonal councillor opposed this allocation back in the fall, but have so far been unsuccessful. However, it has not yet been decided whether TeleZüri will receive the license at all. After all, in addition to the top dog from Tamedia, Tele Top from Winterthur has also applied for the Zurich-North-Eastern Switzerland concession area (see
). Even if its chances are considered comparatively small, we won't know for sure until the concession is awarded in early summer 2008.

 Thomas Benkö, the current editor of the "Digital" section at Abendzeitung Heute, is being promoted to head of the newsdesk. He will take up the post as soon as his successor for the digital side has been appointed, as he told Werbewoche. The position of Head of Newsdesk is a newly created one: "After the launch of Heute, it only became clear over time which positions were needed," said Benkö. He has been part of the team at Ringier's commuter newspaper since the beginning. Before that, he wrote for Blick for six years and for the program magazine Tele for five years.

Ursula Käser Aebi will become the new Head of Communications at Postfinance on April 1, 2008. In this function, she will join the extended Executive Board and replace Marco Stettler, who is retiring. Käser Aebi has been working for the Bern agency Contexta as Client Service Director and member of the Executive Board since 2000. She brings a wealth of experience in integrated communication projects, Postfinance announced on Tuesday.
She holds an Executive Master's degree in Marketing from the HWZ and has worked as a lecturer at Sawi and as a jury member of the Swiss Direct Marketing Awards.

 
Xing, Europe's largest online network for business contacts, has so far implemented its plan to market its own Web 2.0 platform rather bumpily. From the beginning of the year, it placed advertisements on the profile pages of its now around four million members. However, although Xing had already announced this in mid-November 2007, protests from free and premium users rained down shortly afterwards. The angry feedback had an effect: just four days after the introduction, the Xing management promised that Premium users could opt out of the advertising if they wished. After more noise, Xing then declared the profile pages of Premium members to be generally free of advertising.
The company wrote: "This is in response to ongoing feedback that the majority of our Premium members do not want advertising on their profile pages for Basic members. We are very sorry that we have misjudged the situation. We would like to apologize to you for this."
According to one commentator, the successful protests were probably mainly due to the fact that business customers in particular regarded their "community" and their profile as an extension of their private home and wanted to be treated as such, i.e. they were more critical when advertising was displayed on their own doorstep.

Susanne Elsner has been part of the graphics team at the Evoq brand and design agency since January 1, 2008. Susanne Elsner completed her design studies in Constance in spring 2007. With the new addition, the agency, which was founded in August, has grown to ten permanent employees.

 The Swiss Press Council has reprimanded the French-speaking Swiss newspaper Le Matin for reporting the death of comedian François Silvant before the funeral took place in the family circle. François Silvant's manager had sent out a press release on the comedian's death on the morning of June 18. The 6 p.m. cut-off time stated on it was intended to allow his closest acquaintances to attend the funeral in peace. However, an editor at Le Matin posted the news online in the morning, which editor-in-chief Peter Rothenbühler later described as a mistake on the part of the person responsible. He had not been informed of the embargo period.
Because other editorial offices called Le Matin, the entry was subsequently removed from the web. However, the paper later put the article back online, as other media no longer felt bound by the embargo period and also published the article.
The Vaud section of the Impressum media union then lodged a complaint with the Swiss Press Council, which partially upheld it on Tuesday. The newspaper had breached its journalistic obligations by failing to comply with the embargo period.

 The magazine series "Zürich geht aus", "Basel geht aus" and "Tessin geht aus" will be expanded to include the gastronomic guide "Graubünden geht aus". This was decided by the Board of Directors of the publisher Gourmedia. It assumes that the gastronomy magazine will meet with great interest from readers and advertisers: after all, Graubünden is the largest Swiss vacation region with a huge gastronomic offering. According to the publisher, there is also great potential for cooperation. The guides published to date for Zurich, Basel and Ticino are proving very popular. For example, "Basel geht aus", which was published at the beginning of December 2007, is on the bestseller lists of the book trade.