In order to appeal more to a younger audience with its programming, ZDF will be making extensive changes to its programming in the coming year. In particular, the evening line-up is to be spiced up.young people are looking away from ZDF: In recent months, ZDF's market share among 14 to 49-year-olds has been below six percent. A revival of the evening program is intended to alleviate the slump in ratings, as Werben & Verkaufen reports. As ZDF program director Thomas Bellut confirmed to Dpa, from next year feature films and TV movies will be shown on Wednesdays, followed by "Aktenzeichen XY", which has been extended from 60 to 90 minutes. Thursday will become a series evening, with "ZDF.reporter" moving from Wednesday to Thursday. On Sundays, the magazine "History" will now be shown in prime time instead of late at night and folk music programs will only be shown on Saturdays.

 After one and a half years of continuous growth, the latest survey by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) revealed a slight dip in consumer sentiment. However, there is no cause for concern, as the index is still well above its average level in a long-term comparison. SECO surveys around 1,100 families every quarter to determine consumer sentiment in the country. In the last survey in July, consumers somewhat surprisingly assessed the situation as worse in practically all respects than in the survey in April (from +31 to +22). By historical standards, however, consumer sentiment can still be described as sanguine.
According to SECO, developments in both the general economic situation and the financial situation of households themselves are assessed negatively. In particular, future economic development and the potential to build up savings are rated far less optimistically than in April, SECO continues. There has also been a significant change in the assessment of price trends over the last 12 months, which are perceived more strongly than three months ago. Accordingly, inflation expectations have also risen significantly. However, these two values are also at a comparatively low level.

 For the first time since his 5.6 million acquisition of the Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, Rupert Murdoch has spoken out about possible future scenarios for the media group. Hardly surprisingly, the media mogul announced tough cost-cutting measures and rigorous restructuring. According to Murdoch's plans, the Dow Jones publishing house is to undergo a radical overhaul with savings of 50 million dollars. At the same time, advertising revenues are to be significantly increased and the Asian and European business is to be stepped up. According to various media reports, this indicates that Murdoch wants to increasingly stand up to the Financial Times publisher Pearson.
He has a radical reversal of the previous strategy in mind for the Wall Street Journal: The subscriber-only site Wsj.com, one of the Internet's most successful fee-based offerings, would become free to all. This would be expensive in the short term, as Murdoch admitted, but he believes it is a promising option for the future. In any case, he is not lacking in financial backbone: thanks to rapid growth in the cable television sector, his News Corp was recently able to report a quarterly profit of 890 million dollars for the spring alone, which corresponds to an increase of five percent.

 What has been a long time coming will start on Monday, August 20: the business magazine "ECO", which SF has been announcing for some time, will go on air. The new format will focus on Swiss companies that have to prove themselves globally. As broadcasting director Kurt Schad explained, "Eco" aims to make economic contexts understandable. The program aims to give those in the know a look behind the scenes, away from the bare facts and figures. According to SDA, the magazine program, hosted by business journalist Reto Lipp, will be broadcast weekly after the Monday edition of "10vor10". With "Eco", SF is attempting to establish a self-produced business format for the first time in a long time. The last program, "Netto", ran from 1987 to 1993. The subsequent "Cash TV", which is still broadcast on SF zwei today, is not produced by SF, but by Ringier as part of Press TV

 The Zurich-based communications agency Guhl/Partner can now count the Hotel-Tourismus-Revue among its client base.
Guhl/Partner has won another publishing account with the most important Swiss trade publication in the hotel, tourism and catering industry. The creative implementation of the newspaper's reorientation was the decisive factor in the agency's choice, as the agency writes in its communiqué. The relaunch at the end of August is also the initial spark for a new cross-media campaign.

 Students and juniors in the advertising and communications industry from Germany, Austria and Switzerland have until September 3 to submit their best ideas for the German Art Directors Club's young talent competition. The best will be chosen at the association's Junior Days from October 26 to 28 in Munich. The "ADC/Focus Student", "ADC Talent" or "ADC Junior" of the year awards are up for grabs. Official program items also include an information event for young professionals, a two-day public exhibition of all submissions and the competition party.

 Small newspapers are all the rage: what is meant here is not the circulation, but the format. Two newspapers have recently reduced their paper consumption - one on this side of the pond and the other on the other side. The Frankfurter Rundschau advertises its switch to the tabloid size with the claim "Germany is getting handier". The accompanying advertisement demonstrates that readers are much less likely to annoy their train seat neighbors if they pick up a small newspaper instead of a large one.
Not as a tabloid, but narrower, the New York Times has been published since the beginning of this week. Instead of the previous 34.5 centimeters, a page is now only 30.5 centimeters wide. According to New-business.de, this brings the NYT into line with the standard size of US newspapers, which corresponds to a width of twelve inches. The format change will result in lower printing costs, saving around ten million dollars a year. And who says size doesn't matter! Gentlemen in particular may want to remember that sometimes smaller is better.

The Zurich agency Jung von Matt/Limmat is dramatizing different perspectives in a new campaign for the family magazine Fritz+Fränzi. The magazine comes in a new layout and highlights topics relating to upbringing, school, adolescence and parenthood from different perspectives. These divergent views of parents and children are also the content of the new campaign. Jung von Matt/Limmat focuses on children and young people with the motifs and stages their view of parents and adults. So that parents understand what children see. Children rarely see their parents as they see themselves or would like to be seen, but are often perceived as a completely different species, according to a Jung von Matt/Limmat press release. This can lead to differences; Fritz+Fränzi would like to help clarify these. Responsible at Fritz+Fränzi: Odile Burger (Editorial Director), Heike Lorenz (Managing Director and Publishing Director)
Responsible at Jung von Matt/Limmat: Tom Seinige (Creative Direction), Thomas Ammann (Text), Inken Rohweder, Fernando Perez (Art Direction), Sabina Meyer (Graphics), Ilonka Galliard (Art Buying), Felix Schröder, Kristina Burch (Consulting), André Rösler (Illustration)

In an image campaign for the online trader Swissquote, the Bern-based agency Maxomedia visualizes its motto "Trading. Selfmade": On advertisements and posters in the Zurich area as well as rail posters and city lights, a gigantic price curve emerges from typical Swiss landscapes - with an upward trend.
The image campaign is supported by a promotion in print and online media for the new Swissquote Mobile service. For the first time in Switzerland, it is now possible to trade securities on the move. Anyone who opens a trading account at Swissquote.ch by September 9 will receive a digital agenda as a welcome gift. Maxomedia is responsible for the overall concept, design and online and offline realization of the image campaign and promotion.

 The American Silicon Valley, home to all kinds of Internet bubbles, is one mystery poorer: for 14 months, computer professionals in the valley behind San Francisco puzzled over who was behind Steve Jobs' secret diary. Since last summer, the Apple boss allegedly kept a blog in which he wrote, for example, about how business trips by IBM employees looked like a trip for nuns: Colleagues would always come in small hordes, at least twenty of them. The blog, which was fed almost daily, was all the more surprising given that the Apple Group is known for its taciturnity and its notorious drip-feeding of information. However, as the Süddeutsche Zeitung writes, the identity of the fake Steve Jobs has now been revealed: It was 46-year-old Daniel Lyons, an editor at the US business magazine Forbes, who was hitting the keys. He was unmasked by a writing colleague, Brad Stone from the New York Times. On his blog, Lyons accuses Stone of having spoiled the fun of a childish secret for thousands of people. At the same time, however, the "real fake Steve", as he calls himself, is delighted to have been exposed by a respected, printed newspaper and not by an online news outlet. And he is not sparing with his mockery of the blogger scene: they had been trying to conceal his identity for months - and the New Yorker scribbler found out in a mere week.
Despite his latent contempt for the blogging masses, the fake Steve Jobs knows how to use the dynamics of the World Wide Web: All the hype surrounding his unmasking will certainly benefit the book he is launching in the fall about the real Steve Jobs. And he can take further satisfaction from the fact that his idea is already being copied: the secret diary of Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer can be found at Fakesteveballmer.com. However, its author is (still) unknown.

 Swisscom could actually be proud of its recently published half-year figures, as all the curves are pointing upwards: Revenue rose by 6.7 percent year-on-year to CHF 5.09 billion, mainly due to the acquisition of the Italian broadband Internet provider Fastweb. And net profit increased by 23.5 percent to CHF 936 million, with the proceeds from the sale of a block of shares in Swisscom Mobile accounting for a large part of this. All would be well, were it not for Swisscom's TV projects: Bluewin TV and the interactive remote control Betty caused a loss of CHF 104 million in the first half of the year; the Betty remote control alone, which allows subscribers to take part in competitions, surveys and votes, posted a loss of CHF 60 million. As Swisscom CEO Carsten Schloter said in a telephone conference on Wednesday, 300,000 remote controls have been pre-produced for Betty since its launch in June 2006, but only 10,000 customers in Switzerland and 100,000 in Germany have been won. This is disappointing.
Since its launch in November 2006, Bluewin TV has been struggling with technical problems and excessively high connection costs; television via the telephone line incurs installation costs of around CHF 1,300 per connection; although these costs are falling slightly, the target of CHF 500 once set by Schloter is still a long way off. On the other hand, there is solid customer growth: Swisscom is gaining around 5000 customers per month, with a total of 50,000 at the end of June and an expected 80,000 by the end of the year.
If the installation of Bluewin TV remains so expensive, Swisscom will have spent around CHF 110 million by the end of the year, according to SDA calculations, but will only have earned CHF 30 million. However, Swisscom CEO Schloter hopes that the technology of the Italian broadband provider Fastweb, which was purchased in May, will provide a remedy by bypassing the house wiring. This should enable connection costs to be reduced to 700 francs per customer.
While Bluewin TV will continue to be pursued as before, Swisscom must, as Carsten Schloter said, think about the reorientation of Betty. However, it is too early to say anything more specific. Betty employs 30 people in Switzerland and 100 in Munich.

 Jacqueline Wettstein has been the new Head of Communications at the Swiss Medical Association (FMH) since the beginning of August. She replaces Daniel Lüthi, who has been Head of Communications since 2005 and is now taking on a new professional challenge, according to a press release issued on Wednesday. Wettstein was responsible for communications for various pharmaceutical and medical technology companies as well as for clinics and hospitals at the Zug PR agency Dr. Peter P. Knobel. She previously worked as deputy press spokesperson for Helsana. She studied German and Romance languages and literature and holds an Executive Master of Corporate Communications from the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.