This year's Screen-up & Congress will take place on October 17 at the Arena Filmcity in Zurich's new Sihlcity shopping center. The focus will be on digitalization as the media challenge of the future. Experts and broadcaster bosses will address the question of what this development means for the medium of television. Dr. Hans-Peter Ketterl, Head of Marketing Communications at the BMW Group, will present the opportunities for companies through digitization from the perspective of advertising clients. Raimo Malila, European Head of Mobile TV and Video at Nokia Multimedia, will show which devices the leading cell phone manufacturer intends to use to support the breakthrough of mobile TV.
An insert introduces four fundamentally different types and their individual media use: The so-called "KommTech types" explain media use in the age of digitalization.
The heads of broadcasters Matthias Alberti (Sat.1), Ingrid Deltenre (SF), Dominik Kaiser (3+), Catherine Mühlemann (MTV Networks Germany) and Anke Schäferkordt (RTL Television) will then discuss the process of digitization in an IGEM talk chaired by Hannes Britschgi and name the consequences for their own programmes. At the end of the Congress section, participants are invited to a VIP stand-up dinner in the Rohstofflager and to the subsequent screen-up party.

 The entry period for the D&AD Awards 2008 begins on October 10, and aspirants for the famous pencil have until January 16, 2008 to submit their work. The organizers want to meet the new needs of the industry by making some changes to the categories. The jury for "Graphic Design" will judge three new categories: "Applied Print Graphics", "Environmental Graphics" and "Moving Image". "Mobile Marketing" and "Broadcast Innovations" will have their own juries and entries for "Magazine & Newspaper Design" can be submitted as an online version. Details will be available from October 10 at Dandad.org/awards08.
The opening of the submission period will be accompanied by the first in a series of animated films created by Saatchi & Saatchi London. The films are inspired by the discussions that take place in agencies every day: They feature interviews with previous Yellow Pencil winners who will reveal how they came up with the award-winning idea. Winners of the 2007 D&AD Student Awards will animate the films.

 The two Neuchâtel daily newspapers L'Express and L'Impartial and the regional television station Canal Alpha are planning to set up a multimedia platform together. The website is to be launched in spring 2008. SNP, the publisher of the two daily newspapers, and Canal Alpha have signed a partnership agreement to this end, as they announced in a joint communiqué on Thursday.
The future service will be managed by its own editorial team, it added. In addition to illustrated online news texts, the site will also offer videos and interactive content. The entire editorial content of the partner media can also be accessed via the platform. The aim is to become an indispensable reference for regional content.
According to a press release, Canal Alpha will apply to the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) for the regional television license for the entire Jura Arc by 5 December. The SNP intends to support Canal Alpha in this application.
According to SDA, the Biel newspaper Journal du Jura, which is editorially linked to the Neuchâtel newspapers, is not involved in the collaboration. The publisher, the Gassmann Group, is pursuing its own multimedia strategy, together with its own regional broadcaster TeleBielingue. According to Marcel Geissbühler, Director of the Gassmann Group, there are currently no plans for collaboration between the two multimedia platforms.

 Video advertising on the Internet is effective and even comes close to the advertising impact of TV commercials. This is the result of a study by the internet company Yahoo, which compared the effectiveness of online video streams with TV commercials and other forms of online advertising. The study used various methods: In addition to classic campaign tracking, the gaze paths of the test subjects were also recorded in studio tests. The result: in the tests, the test subjects perceived both the TV commercial within a normal TV program and a video stream on a Yahoo website at 100 percent. The activation performance was 50 percent for television and 54 percent for online.
Yahoo's Sales Director, Heiko Genzlinger, emphasizes the advantages of online video advertising: "In contrast to a television commercial, a video stream on the Internet can be delivered to your own target group without wastage. Further advantages are the opportunities for interaction and a certain exclusivity, as there is usually only one online video at a time, the Sales Director continues.

 The Goldbach Media subsidiary Adlink Media is launching what it claims is the first Swiss offer for behavioral targeting. The marketer aims to open up a new dimension in online advertising. According to a press release, behavioral targeting allows advertising to be directed to the desired target group based on user behavior - regardless of the content environment in which they are browsing the Internet. This means that consumers can be targeted not only within a thematic environment or the socio-demographic affinities of individual advertising media, but also on the basis of their interests and surfing behavior across the entire network.
This planning and control technology for online advertising takes advantage of the measurability of this digital and interactive advertising medium by segmenting consumers directly on the basis of their behavior and thus making them addressable for advertising. Adlink Media estimates the potential at 70 percent of Swiss Internet users and offers three different segments: BT Reach, BT Audience and BT Customized.

Publisuisse subsidiary MediaSense has been active as a marketer of radio advertising since the beginning of July. In a campaign for MediaSense, the Bern agency Visu'l now shows what happens to media planners who forget about radio advertising: In tongue-in-cheek advertisements, the forgetful planners end up in jail or in a headlock. The subjects are resolved with the sentence "Radio is the most used medium in Switzerland and belongs in every media mix". In addition to advertisements in industry specialist titles for advertising, the campaign includes Internet banners and mailings.

 In the canton of Fribourg, the authorities are responding with a prevention campaign to the depictions of violence or pornography that are increasingly found on young people's cell phones. The central part of the campaign is the website Wer-bisch.ch, as the Fribourg cantonal police announced on Thursday. The site points out the dangers of the Internet and cell phones to young people and gives advice on how to use these modern means of communication. It also points out that their misuse can have criminal consequences.
The campaign is being promoted in schools to around 20,000 children and young people between the ages of 12 and 18, SDA reports. Police aspirants will carry out actions there. The costs of the three-year campaign amount to 155,000 Swiss francs.

A German mineral water called Thüringer Waldquell is competing against the French sparkling water Evian: On a poster, 33-year-old Christine from Jena looks challengingly into the camera. "From here to the spring: 104 kilometers. From here to Evian-les-Bains: 828 kilometers. That's why Thüringer Waldquell," it says next to it. According to Werben & Verkaufen, the motif is one of two posters with which Thüringer Waldquell appeals to the ecological conscience: "Short transport routes, less CO2 emissions", says the advertising and "Every sip is climate protection".
Hassia, the parent company of the German water, is thus surfing the wave of the current climate debate. And it can also take a swipe at its overpowering competitor. It remains to be seen whether the Evian group Danone will like it. Hassia had already wisely commissioned lawyers to check the advertising. Hopefully they won't poison the climate with their legal gibberish.

 The future of folk music is causing a stir not only at Swiss Radio DRS, but also at the local Emmental radio station Radio Emme. Plans to remove folk music from the program have led to a scandal in the station's board of directors. The Board of Directors decided on Wednesday to ban folk music from Radio Emme from spring 2008, according to a statement from Board member and Radio Emme co-founder Niklaus Blaser. As Blaser does not agree with this step, he has decided to resign from the Board of Directors.
Instead of folk music, "generally English, often annoying and melancholy catcalls and whining" are to be broadcast around the clock in future and "repeated for the umpteenth time", Blaser continues according to SDA.
A program is planned that thousands of stations are already producing. Radio Emme is thus saying goodbye even more to its audience in its broadcasting area around the Napf. In view of the CHF 800,000 in licence fee money that the station is to receive annually in future, the decision is tantamount to "irresponsibility" and "taking the piss" out of listeners, according to Blaser's letter.
The decision to abandon folk music was neither confirmed nor denied by Karen Wiedmer, President of the Board of Directors, when asked by SDA. The Board of Directors and the management have been reviewing and adapting the broadcaster's strategy for a year and a half, the Board of Directors stated in a press release. Blaser's resignation is deeply regretted. The supervisory body did not comment further.

 The overall winner of this year's annual report rating by the business magazine Bilanz is Straumann. Novartis follows in second place, with SBB in third. The award for best design went to Valora, with SBB in second place ahead of Migros. The winners in the Value Reporting category were UBS, ahead of Roche and Thurgauer Kantonalbank. Bilanz has published an annual ranking of the best Swiss annual reports since 1988. This year, at the suggestion of the Harbour Club, the rating of the design and value reporting jury was supplemented for the first time by an additional jury for the overall ranking. The idea behind this was that the best annual reports should not be determined by arithmetic, but by a panel of experts on the basis of overall impression.
The awards were presented by Pierre-André Schmitt, member of the Bilanz editorial board. The three best annual reports in the overall ranking were honored by Gaby Tschofen, Head of Communications at Barry Callebaut, Anne-Marie Nega-Ledermann, publicist, and Philipp Hallauer, Chairman of the Board of Directors of KPMG. The award ceremony in the auditorium of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (HWZ) was organized by the HarbourClub, an association of 50 heads of communications from Swiss companies.
The three best annual reports of the overall jury:
1st rank Straumann
2nd rank Novartis
3rd rank SBB
The top ten in the design category:
1st rank Valora
2nd rank SBB
3rd rank Migros
4th rank Jelmoli
6th rank Bank Coop
7th place Bobst Group
7th rank Bühler
9th place Tamedia 4th place Schindler
10th rank EOS
The top ten in the Value Reporting category:
1st rank UBS
2nd rank Roche
3rd place Thurgauer Kantonalbank
4th place Zürcher Kantonalbank
5th rank Swiss Re
6th rank Novartis
7th rank Syngenta
8th place Ciba SC
9th place Xstrata (Switzerland)
10th rank Straumann

 The 2007 Suva Media Prize goes to journalist Catherine Riva for her articles on the risks to which small children are exposed due to chlorine in indoor swimming pools. Catherine Riva published her research in several articles in the newspaper Le Matin dimanche, as Suva announced on Thursday. Switzerland does not yet have any limit values for air quality in indoor swimming pools. With her articles, Riva triggered a discussion about this, which led to an interpellation in the National Council, among other things.
In addition, the journalist Françoise Ducret receives a recognition award for a report on the subject of burnout on French-speaking Swiss television. Sylviane Pittet also receives a recognition award for a text in the magazine Femina on the side effects that young binge drinkers have to reckon with.
The Suva Media Prize, endowed with CHF 7000, has been awarded since 1994. It is reserved for French-language work relating to the prevention of accidents and health problems.

 The television of the future is intensifying competition among Swiss providers. While Swisscom and Cablecom are upgrading their networks, regional cable providers are striking back: They are pulling fiber optic cables to private customers. According to SDA, the company CATV Satellitentechnik has for the first time laid fiber optic cable to the end customer in a Basel housing cooperative. Until now, only business customers have been able to benefit from ultra-fast lines. Now surfing speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbit/s) and more are no problem for private customers either, CATV Managing Director Werner Zimmermann told SDA. Swisscom currently stops at 15 Mbit/s and Cablecom at 10 Mbit/s.
Laying fiber optics directly into private homes is new. The cable network operator Télévision Sierre began upgrading its network to fiber optics a year ago. However, the optical fibers only reach the neighborhood distribution boxes. From there, customers are served with traditional copper cables.
Stadtantennen AG Baar (STAG) took a step closer to the end customer by installing fiber optic cables in a residential complex as a pilot project, but not in the individual apartments.
This means that the residents of the 190 apartments in Basel have a head start in terms of bandwidth and no longer have to worry about bottlenecks threatening conventional networks due to the flood of images. Cablecom, for example, caused a lot of red flags when it dropped analog TV channels to make room for digital channels.
Meanwhile, 45 analog TV channels, 600 digital TV channels and 30 high-definition channels (HDTV) are running on the new fiber optic network of the Basel development. "In extreme cases, we can transmit up to 3,000 TV channels," says CATV Managing Director Zimmermann. In addition, the TV picture quality of his fiber optic system is significantly better than that of Swisscom or Cablecom.
Swisscom no longer offers Bluewin TV to new customers who only have ADSL access (maximum 5 Mbit/s) and are not yet connected to the much faster VDSL technology (currently 16 Mbit/s). For those first-time customers who still receive Bluewin TV via ADSL, picture and sound weaknesses make for a clouded viewing experience.