The teletext of SF, TSR and TSI may now officially report on the prices of collective investment schemes. This was decided by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission. This makes Teletext, whose finance and economics section has always been one of the main topics, the first electronic medium to receive this recognition. Every day, over 1.1 million users access the information on Teletext.

 The Zurich advertising agency Weber Harbeke has lost a mandate. It had been working for the reinsurer Converium since 2002. Weber Harbeke was responsible for international communications and the annual report. Following a takeover battle, Converium was sold to the French company Scor in May, which now has consequences for the advertising agency: This year's annual report will be the last under the Converium name. And an image campaign that was in the pipeline was stopped immediately. "In over 20 years of agency experience, I have never lost a client in this way", says Managing Director Thomas Harbeke in a press release. Weber Harbeke was able to gain a great deal of expertise in the financial sector and in handling complex annual reports during this collaboration, it continues: "We worked in shifts 24 hours a day to process data from New York." The agency is also saddened by the loss of the mandate for personal reasons, as the collaboration over the past few years has always been characterized by mutual trust and respect.

 Tamedia is still tight-lipped about the planned new commuter newspaper that it wants to publish together with Espace Media and Basler Zeitung Medien. "The boards of directors of the three publishing houses have issued negotiating mandates. Now the negotiators are working hard to clarify the last outstanding points," Zimmer told Werbewoche. This involves aspects such as circulation or the exact distribution areas. For this reason, the publishing house is not yet able to provide any details, but is confident that it will soon be able to provide more precise information. The decision on the definitive launch has therefore not yet been made.

 Hanspeter Nägelin took up the position of Key Account Manager for the greater Zurich area at Multicolor Print in Baar on August 13. The 43-year-old is responsible for customer support in the field of electronic and printed communication, as detailed in the press release issued on Monday. Nägelin has many years of experience in key account management and has also worked as a consultant on the agency side.Multicolor Print, a subsidiary of LZ Medien Holding, claims to be the largest sheet-fed printing company in Central Switzerland; in 2006 it achieved sales of 29.4 million Swiss francs and currently employs 118 people.

 According to readership figures, the Swiss are still a nation of newspaper and magazine readers. This is shown by Wemf's Mach-Basic Study 2007-2. According to the press release, 91.6 percent of the Swiss population aged 14 and over read at least one of the newspapers and 92.6 percent one of the magazines included in the study on a more or less regular basis. Overall, the figures can be regarded as relatively stable since 2000; the total net reach of the newspapers published in the Mach-Basic study varies between 89.0 and 91.6 percent and between 92.6 and 94.3 percent for magazines. Nevertheless, there is a central trend within this relative stability: free newspapers are picking up more and more readers: In German-speaking Switzerland, 20 Minuten has once again made slight gains, while in French-speaking Switzerland, Le Matin bleu, the free newspaper of Le Matin, has immediately established itself as the strongest daily newspaper, overtaking its big sister paper.
The study calculates that 20 Minuten has 1,212,000 readers in German-speaking Switzerland. This is 42,000 more than the last publication in March 2007, putting 20 Minuten in the same league as Blick and Tages-Anzeiger combined. In addition to 20 Minuten, three new free newspapers, included in the Wemf statistics for the first time, are vying for readership: Ringier's free newspaper Heute, which is published in the afternoon and is already read by 230,000 people, as well as Le Matin bleu in French-speaking Switzerland with 353,000 readers and 20 minutes with 276,000 readers.
Thanks to the consumption of these commuter newspapers, the overall reach of the daily newspapers has achieved its best result since 2000. Despite the increasing number of free newspapers - .ch will be published for the first time on 19 September - the readership of the paid daily newspapers has not changed significantly: Blick, for example, lost 5,000 readers and still has 689,000 readers, while the Tages-Anzeiger gained 2,000 readers and now has 536,000.
Sonntagsblick is still number one among the Sunday newspapers, although it has fallen below the one million mark again and still reaches 995,000 readers. It is followed by the Sonntagszeitung with 768,000 and the NZZ am Sonntag, which was the only one of these three to increase: by 13,000 to 479,000. The disappearance of two magazines from the market - Cash and Facts - means that the readership of this publication group is at its lowest level since 2000, although 92.6 percent still read at least one magazine regularly.
The most widely read paid-for magazine is still the consumer magazine Ktipp with 1,009,000 readers. It is followed by Beobachter (999,000) and Schweizer Illustrierte (970,000). The weekly free newspapers published by the major distributors remain by far the largest publications: The Coop-Zeitung remains in the lead with 2.66 million readers. The Migros magazine is followed by 2.32 million people. In Switzerland as a whole, the magazines in three languages have a readership of 3.3 million (Coop) and 3 million (Migros).
Mach-Basic 2007-2 from Wemf AG für Werbemedienforschung aims to provide the advertising industry, publishers and cinema marketers with up-to-date usage data on print media and cinemas. It is based on a survey of 23,960 people, around 17,200 of whom live in German-speaking Switzerland. The surveys lasted twelve months, from April 2006 to the end of March 2007.

  The AZ Medien Group is thinking about launching a free newspaper. However, the Sunday market is currently the company's priority, spokeswoman Eva Keller told NZZ am Sonntag. If the Aargau publishing house launches a free newspaper, this will not happen before 2008, according to Keller, who told Werbewoche that no concrete project for a possible free newspaper is currently underway. "The market for free newspapers is currently in a state of flux and it is clear that we will not simply stand by and watch," explained the spokesperson. However, there are no detailed plans yet. We are giving it a lot of thought. The question of whether a possible free newspaper should only be distributed in Aargau, in the area of the Mitteland newspaper association or throughout Switzerland could therefore not be answered today.
The media company is currently working flat out on the new Sunday newspaper, which will be published for the first time next weekend. With a total circulation of 240,000 copies, the paper will have the second-highest circulation of a Sunday newspaper in Switzerland. When the launch of "Sonntag" was announced, there were rumors that the AZ Medien Group wanted to bring other publishers on board as partners. So far, however, these have apparently not been found - outside of the existing Mittelland newspaper partners. According to Eva Keller, however, the company is still open to possible partnerships.
AZ Medien's free newspaper plans are possibly a reaction to the intention of the media company Tamedia to distribute its planned new free newspaper in the canton of Aargau. "The focus of the commuter newspaper is on the Basel, Bern and Zurich conurbations. These do not stop at the cantonal borders," said Tamedia spokesperson Christoph Zimmer.

After winning a competitive presentation, the agency Gutzwiller Kommunikation und Design in Aarau is the new agency for Azonline.ch, the regional Internet portal of the AZ Medien Group. According to the press release, the agency's first job was to implement a completely "headless" campaign. The focus is on remarkably curious people who are looking for the latest news. However, these people are looking for this information in the most inappropriate places imaginable. The message of the campaign should therefore be: Anyone who wants to get news more easily and quickly is better served by Azonline.ch.
Gutzwiller Kommunikation und Design spontaneously selected the subjects for the campaign during various city and country tours and shot the photos on location in reportage form, as the press release goes on to say. The campaign will be launched in September throughout the Azonline.ch catchment area.
Responsible on the client side: Sam Müller, Head of Azonline.ch. Responsible on the agency side: Brigitte Hediger (consulting assistance); Stefan Wegmüller (graphics); René Moor (text concept); Marc Gutzwiller (CD). Photography: Sarah Keller, Aarau.

 Out-of-home advertiser APG is Publisuisse's marketing partner for on-screen advertising in the UBS arenas. During the European Football Championship Euro 08, regional stadiums will be built in 17 Swiss cities where fans can watch broadcasts of the matches (see "Full house and full cash registers"
). Publisuisse, which is responsible for marketing, is now entrusting APG with the sale of local advertising opportunities in the arenas of German and French-speaking Switzerland. The offers will be available from September 10, 2007. This marketing is a first for APG. Ivan Schultheiss, Head of Sales Switzerland at APG, said in a press release: "We are very much looking forward to this first-time marketing challenge in the TV sector."

 The Swiss Fair Trading Commission wants to become more transparent and has therefore decided to change its publication practice: All cases that have been decided by one of the three chambers will now be published on the website once the appeal period has expired. The change is based on a request from the new President of the Swiss Commission for Fair Trading, Pascale Bruderer. She would like to make the Fairness Commission and its work better known to the public. At a plenary meeting, it was therefore decided to make the work of the Commission more transparent, according to a press release. Up to now, only cases that were currently in the news in the general public were published, or judgments whose publication had the character of a sanction.
For this reason, all cases that have been dealt with and decided by the Commission have recently been published on the website Lauterkeit.ch. As this is not a sanction measure, the names of the parties are omitted in each case. The press work practiced to date and the publication as a sanction measure are to be continued in equal measure.

 If you missed the premiere of the Cannes reel on August 28 at the Maag Music & Eventhall, you can now bring the best international commercials directly into your living room: The "Swiss DVD's Of Cannes 07" are here. This is the third time that the Cannes reel has been released on DVD, published by Cinecom and its partner Swissfilm Association. The double DVD box set contains not only the Cannes award-winning commercials, but also the Swiss Reel'07, i.e. all the films submitted from Switzerland this year. The DVD box is available from Cinecom for 280 francs.

 The increase in the circulation of the commuter newspaper 20 Minuten has been completed. In June, the Zurich media company Tamedia announced that circulation was to be increased (see ). This was completed on September 3, said Tamedia spokesman Christoph Zimmer when asked by Werbewoche. The circulation now stands at 550,000 copies. In order to accommodate this, Tamedia has installed several hundred new distribution boxes and converted existing boxes into so-called double boxes, which offer space for two stacks of newspapers lying one behind the other. Zimmer did not want to confirm that the reason for the increase in circulation was the imminent launch of the free newspaper .ch. Rather, experience with 20 Minutes in French-speaking Switzerland had shown that a larger number of newspapers could be distributed without increasing the return rate, explained Zimmer. Tamedia wants to keep the number of unsubscribed copies as low as possible. Similarly, the number of readers per copy has not fallen in French-speaking Switzerland, although the publishing house distributes a much larger number of newspapers there in relation to the size of the population. Apparently, the company now wants to benefit from the same effect on this side of the language border.

 The new free newspaper .ch is set to launch next week. Until now, discussions have focused primarily on the distribution network—including home delivery—and on how well the print edition will be received by readers and advertisers. But .ch also aims to make its mark in the online space. However, an established competitor—20 Minuten, which has an online editorial team of over 50 people—already awaits in this space. The new free newspaper is banking on technology and cross-media solutions. «We can offer a very sophisticated online service right from the start,» explained .ch Editor-in-Chief Rolf Leeb. The four-person online team, led by Kevin Lancashire, will focus its work primarily on cross-media initiatives. In terms of staffing, the structure is certainly not comparable to other online newsrooms, according to Leeb. «But we’re state-of-the-art technologically. That makes us much more efficient.» Although there was little time to set up the platform, the team plans to offer a few exclusive extras, particularly in the cross-media area. The modern content management system makes it possible to quickly implement the latest requests not only from the editorial team but also from advertisers.
It was also important to Leeb to automate the process of posting the entire news feed to the platform as much as possible. «We don’t want to use our limited staff resources for mindless copy-and-paste work.» The entire news section is therefore published on the site fully automatically—including images from news agencies—and updated around the clock. In addition, there is content from print publications, particularly in the lifestyle section. The team also aims to offer a regional structure from the very beginning that allows for personalization.
In the print edition, however, Leeb and his team plan to focus on publishing a small number of carefully selected and thoroughly researched articles in the news section. In doing so, .ch also aims to set itself apart from its competitor, 20 Minuten. «We want to provide guidance for readers, not just a flood of bite-sized news items,» Leeb emphasized to Werbewoche. In the online sector, however, this concept cannot be applied for the time being due to a lack of resources. However, the website is being continuously expanded. The focus here is on a consistent cross-media strategy. «We have received countless offers for cross-media partnerships, which we haven’t even been able to properly review yet,» said Leeb.
To ensure that *.ch*, with a print run of 430,000 copies, can be delivered to Swiss doorsteps by 7:00 a.m. on September 19 in specially designed stands, Leeb and his team, along with external partners, are currently working around the clock. ’We have an ambitious goal,« Leeb explained. Launching a new newspaper with a team of 40 editorial staff members can only work if everyone is fully committed and puts their heart and soul into the project. They’ve been able to put together just such a team.
Before the launch on September 19, the editorial team plans to produce a few more test issues to work through all the processes. «We’re on a stormy journey, but we’re on course,» says the .ch editor-in-chief. For Leeb himself, who has 20 years of experience in journalism, the launch of the new free newspaper is the most exciting time of his career. Leeb is well aware that 20 Minuten is a major competitor on the market. He sees himself in the role of David facing off against Goliath: «And we all know how that story ended.».