The current Asia correspondent for Radio DRS 1 René Schell is returning to Switzerland. From the end of the year, he will replace Esther Schneider as the station's new daily manager, who will set up a new audio book magazine for the first channel. Schaubli has been working as a foreign correspondent in New Delhi, India, since 2006, according to an SDA report. Previously, the 48-year-old was head of the newsroom in Bern and the regional journal Zurich Schaffhausen. At the end of the year, he will now become head of DRS 1 daily. He takes over from Esther Schneider who, after four years in this position, is now moving on to new tasks within the station in the audiobook sector. However, she will continue to be heard as host of the popular Sunday talk show "Persönlich".

 There was great indignation in the relevant circles when Axel Springer's Bild launched Germany's chief feminist Alice Schwarzer as an advertising medium for the tabloid and Jung von Matt wrote underneath: "Every truth needs a brave woman to speak it". The outrage grew immeasurably when the photographed woman admitted that she was not being abused against her will, but was posing for good money. Since Schwarzer's admission, all hell has broken loose in the relevant blogs. It was unbelievable, she said, she had betrayed the whole thing, even prostituting herself with her advertising appearance for a magazine that regularly depicted naked women. The scolded woman takes a fairly relaxed view of the scolding and dryly states that it certainly does no harm to the women's cause if a female head appears as part of the campaign in the line-up from Willy Brandt to Mahatma Ghandi. Incidentally, she immediately donated her fee to charity. Moreover, her commitment to the Bild newspaper does nothing to change her critical attitude towards the paper, which she had already repeatedly and extensively bashed in her magazine Emma. She is right. After all, Alice Schwarzer is neither a saint nor Jesus, but a modern woman in an accelerated world - after all, nobody expects a model in a Panthène advertisement to think the product is great.

 In response to the new Sunday edition of the Mittelland Zeitung, the Basler Zeitung (BaZ) is launching the new "Wochenende" section in the Saturday edition on September 15. According to BaZ publisher Matthias Hagemann, the expansion of the Saturday edition has been a complete success in the advertising market. For the time being, BaZ has decided not to launch a Sunday title. "Wochenende" will appear for the first time on September 15, exactly one day before the first Sunday edition from AZ Medien. On Friday, BaZ cited a market study as justification for the Saturday expansion. According to the study, the Saturday BaZ is already the most-read newspaper in the region on Sundays.
The new Wochenende-Bund, on the other hand, has already hit the advertising market, BaZ publisher Matthias Hagemann told SDA. The product will therefore be launched earlier than initially planned. The BaZ publisher assumes that the new Bund will be fully financed by advertisements in its first year.
According to the BaZ, topics in the new Weekend Bund are those areas of daily life that are just as exciting to read on a Sunday as they are on a Saturday, regardless of topicality. The additional offer is intended to appeal to women in particular. Cohabitation, leisure and people as well as children and trends are covered.
BaZ publisher Matthias Hagemann sees little economic prospects for a Sunday edition, as he told SDA on Friday. In his opinion, the Sunday edition of the Mittelland Zeitung will not be a success either. Should the seventh edition of the Mittelland Zeitung prove to be a success, contrary to his expectations, BaZ could react quickly: In this case, the new Bund should be integrated into a Sunday edition.

 The success curve of Olten-based Weltbild Verlag continues to point upwards. Last year, the bookselling and media company was able to increase its turnover by five percent to a total of 120 million. Managing Director Rita Graf attributes the good result for 2006/07 primarily to the "consistent integration of distribution channels and a unique market position in the book market", as reported by SDA. The company already generates 20 percent of its turnover from sales via its online stores. This segment alone grew by 28 percent last year. Another decisive growth factor was the continuous expansion of the product range, which includes books, CDs and DVDs, as well as the integration of a new second-hand range with over 15 million CDs, books and DVDs. As the SDA writes, Weltbild intends to further expand its Internet offerings.
From a publishing perspective, the publication of the Blick bestseller editions proved to be a stroke of luck for the Olten-based publishing house with a total of 216 employees. This six-volume series of biographical stories, such as "Die Fertigmacher", proved to be extremely strong sellers. In addition, the expansion of the Weltbildplus branch network went according to plan in the past financial year with three new openings. The 29th Weltbildplus branch will open at the end of August. The management also expects sales to increase in the coming year.

 Good news for couch potatoes: Tele Bärn is bringing the open-air feeling into your living room. From July 20 to 22, the station will be broadcasting the Gurten Festival for the tenth time as the official festival TV. With a 30-strong team, Tele Bärn will be providing the TV production of the main stage concerts for the first time. Eight cameras will be used for this alone. In previous years, the regional broadcaster had filmed the concerts on the smaller tent stage. In the Gurtenfestival specials, Tele Bärn shows concert excerpts, interviews with the stars and insights behind the scenes. From Friday to Sunday at 18.20 and 21.20, six special magazines will be broadcast on the channel, presented by Chantal Beljean and Jean Claude Galli. The station will also get you in the mood for the festival by presenting reruns of last year's festival from Monday to Wednesday at 7.20 pm. If you can't get enough of the Gurten, you can relive the best moments in the night program after the festival: from 23 to 28 July, a Gurten Festival special will be repeated every evening from 10.30 pm.

 The content of Espace.ch can now be displayed in an optimized form on mobile phones. The URL http://m.espace.ch provides services such as the latest news and a mobile events calendar. Users can access a comprehensive package of information under the headings News, Regional News, Outing, Sport, People and Business. In this way, the publishing house wants to enable readers to stay up to date at all times, even when they are on the move, according to a press release. The latest generation of cell phones can access the information at the usual Internet address Espace.ch.

Success for Walker on the other side of the pond too: the Fleurop annual report from the Zurich-based advertising agency has won silver at the OneShow Design Awards in the USA. This was announced on Thursday at the awards ceremony in New York. The agency has thus won a total of three OneShow Pencils for its campaigns. The Fleurop annual report had already won gold at EPICA, ADC Europe and ADC Switzerland.

 Another special-interest station, one for pop and folk music, is to go on the air as early as this fall. Under the name Swissmusic TV, of all things, the station initiated from the U1 environment is to become the new home of programs such as "Alpenwelle". As Ringier's Swiss TV magazine TV2 reported in its latest issue, U1 advertising executive Peter Heeb, who owns 51 percent of Swissmusic TV, is behind the plan, as are other U1 shareholders who own the remaining 49 percent. Swissmusic TV is envisioned as a catch-all for music shows currently broadcast on U1, TV2 reports. These will no longer find a place there after the planned relaunch of U1 as the sports channel U Sport (see 

). Under the new RTVA, the new Swissmusic TV no longer needs a broadcasting license because there is no claim to a broadcasting obligation.

 After a good four years in the job, Head of Communications Andrea Hemmi will be leaving the Kuoni travel group at the end of November. She wants to set up her own communications agency. Following the development and expansion of Group-wide corporate and crisis communications, Hemmi now wants to make her experience in communications and crisis management available to a wider circle of companies and decision-makers, according to a press release. Kuoni CEO Armin Meier regrets the departure of the Head of Communications: "She has played a key role in shaping internal and external communications and thus contributed to the company's success. Her successor has not yet been appointed.
In spring, Peter Brun, Head of Communications Switzerland, had already announced his departure from the Kuoni media department to take over the editorial management of the Ringier program KonsumTV. However, he never took up this position (see
"Peter Brun will not become editorial director after all"
). Brun will continue to work for Kuoni, Andrea Hemmi told SDA on request.

 The Swiss private channel U1 TV will be called U Sport in future. The name stands for "entertainment and sport", as the TV magazine TV2 reports. However, the sports program window Schweizer Sport Fernsehen, whose launch was announced on Sunday, will run under the name Schweizer Sport Fernsehen, as the St. Gallen media entrepreneur and former FDP National Councillor Peter Weigelt told Werbewoche. "We only have airtime on the TV channel, and previous U1 TV programs will continue to be part of the program." However, Schweizer Sport Fernsehen must first obtain a Bakom license. Although the license is not yet in the bag, the company United Sport Production USP TV, which was founded specifically for Schweizer Sport Fernsehen, has already concluded contracts with sports associations. "If you don't take a risk, you won't get anywhere," says Weigelt. The hope is to start broadcasting in mid-September, when important sporting events take place.
Schweizer Sport Fernsehen is a special-interest channel and wants to have a clear program grid so that each target group knows when to tune in. For example, handball could flicker across the screen on Monday, martial arts on Tuesday or basketball on Wednesday. Weigelt is aware that the high ratings in sports television can be achieved with major events such as football matches. However, he points out that the rights in these areas are sometimes so expensive that even large stations can no longer afford them.
The new channel wants to find a different niche. The Affichage subsidiary Sportart will be responsible for marketing the broadcast windows. A classic advertising campaign is not planned for the launch; instead, the aim is to promote sporting events and use these events in turn as content for the channel.
There was some fuss about who was involved in the financing: Blick reported on Wednesday that Adriana Ospel was investing in the program window. On Thursday, however, the tabloid had to follow up with a correction stating that the businesswoman was not involved in any way with U1 or Sport Fernsehen. "This hoax probably stems from the fact that Ms. Ospel was once on a list with over 80 other names on which we listed possible project partners," explained Weigelt. The Sonntagszeitung then picked out a few prominent names from this list of suggested names. However, in addition to broadcaster U1 and Affichage Holding, several private individuals such as Urs Rohner, Martin Bisang, Giorgio Beer and Weigelt himself are shareholders.

 After the publishers' association reacted to the annual report of the postal regulatory authority with a statement on Wednesday, the Swiss Direct Marketing Association (SDV) has now also spoken out. In a communiqué, it writes that the Swiss have to pay the highest postal taxes for letters weighing up to 20 grams almost anywhere in Europe. These excessive prices generate profits in the monopoly sector, which Swiss Post can use to finance its financially less successful activities in the competitive sector. In its press release, the SDV therefore poses the rhetorical question of whether the postal monopoly is equivalent to an advertising tax. Like the publishers, the Direct Marketing Association is also calling for the market for letters to be opened up as quickly as possible. The experience of neighbouring countries has shown that third parties can only penetrate this lucrative market if there is comprehensive liberalization. In the eyes of the SDV, however, the plans for market liberalization are only being pursued half-heartedly; the original deregulation timetable cannot be adhered to.
Due to this delay, the SDV is calling for the immediate introduction of a separate postage class for letters weighing up to 20 grams. This would allow almost half of all letters to be transported more cheaply, it continues. In this way, Swiss Post should pass on additional profits from the letter monopoly and savings from optimization projects to consumers.

Metadesign has won a series of prizes for its work in the field of brand repositioning at the global Rebrand 100 design awards. Since 2005, the award has honored the most convincing repositioning of corporate and product branding worldwide.  
Metadesign's work for Alternatives Incorporated, PC World, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Ernst Klett Verlag, the South Tyrol umbrella brand and the new websites of Bucher Industries and Raiffeisen Switzerland were honored in this world-renowned competition. "We are delighted that our projects are also achieving good results in an international comparison," said Brundo Schmidt, Managing Partner of Metadesign's Zurich branch, in the corresponding press release on Thursday. In addition to Zurich, Metadesign has branches in Berlin and San Francisco with a total of 250 employees.