SRG has appointed Daniel Jorio as a new member of the Executive Board. The Board of Directors has also appointed Silvio Studer as Chief Technology Officer and Joachim Rüede as Head of Media Services. Hans Strassmann, former Head of Technology and IT, will retire at the end of 2007. Daniel Jorio is a new member of the SRG-. The 54-year-old has been Head of Finance and Controlling since 1999. Jorio was previously a non-voting participant in Executive Board meetings. His appointment as a member of the Executive Board is made possible by a decision of the Central Council to amend the rules of procedure so that the respective Head of Finance and Controlling also sits on the Executive Board.
Silvio Studer will become Chief Technology Officer as of June 1. He will be responsible for the entire technical infrastructure of SRG SSR. Studer, 51, began his SRG SSR career in 1986 at the Zurich Technical Directorate. Since 1997, he has been head of the newly founded Media Services, which provides services for radio and television production as well as management services for the entire Group.
Joachim Rüede took over from Studer as Head of Media Services on June 1. The qualified business information specialist has worked for SRG since 1994. Since 1999, he has headed the Federal Parliament Production Center, which Matthias Vergeat will take over on August 15.
Hans Strassmann, the former Head of the Directorate General's Technology and IT Division, is to retire at the end of 2007. He was responsible for the distribution of all SRG radio and television programs, the development of the entire infrastructure for satellite distribution and the introduction of digital distribution of radio and television.

 Europe's largest publishing house is investing in the profitable postal services market by acquiring a majority stake in the Luxembourg Pin Group. Instead of the previous 25.5 percent, Axel Springer will in future hold 71 percent of Deutsche Post's strongest competitor in the German mail business. According to SDA, corresponding agreements have been concluded with the co-owners, the WAZ media group, the Georg von Hiltzbrinck publishing group and Roaslia. Springer is investing a total of 510 million euros in the acquisition. The cartel office still has to give the transaction the green light. No objections are expected, especially as Springer's stake will be reduced to 63.7 percent by September through the transfer of shares to regional publishers.
 
Springer recently announced the acquisition of Aufeminin as part of its digitization strategy (see
). The media company is now strengthening its position on the postal market. The Pin Group, in which the participating publishing houses bundle their postal activities, is arguably a worthwhile investment: even before the abolition of the German letter monopoly, the company recorded rapid growth and is now the second-largest provider on the German letter market with more than 60 regional subsidiaries. The Group covers 96 percent of Germany and employs over 7,000 people.

The last issue of Facts was published on Thursday. The WOZ comforts its readers in an advertisement about the loss: "Facts will also be available in the future. In the WOZ. And for less cash." The offer: until the end of the year, Facts readers will receive the WOZ including "Le Monde diplomatique" for just 50 francs. Incidentally, the offer also applies to soon-to-be former Cash readers.

 The two media companies Springer Science+Business Media and Docu AG have merged. The result is Docu Schweiz AG. The new company is the largest Swiss provider of information for the construction industry, as detailed in a press release. With a focus on the unique combination of print and online media, the company is aiming for qualitative and quantitative growth. The company, which is part of the internationally active Docu Group, intends to invest heavily in the areas of databases and the Internet. The merger was preceded in March by the sale of Springer Science+Business Media's B2B construction activities to the London-based investor group GMT. The latter is a shareholder in the Docu Group. Docu AG publishes Swiss construction documentation. Springer Science+Business Media Switzerland's portfolio includes the publications Baublatt, Kommunalmagazin, Transportrundschau and Auto&Technik.
The company resulting from the merger will be located at Springer Science+Business Media's current headquarters in Rüschlikon. The Blauen site, where Docu AG is domiciled, will be dissolved. At the same time, the organization will be redefined and a new management team will be appointed from 1.7.2007. The 44-year-old Franco G. Bernasconi will have overall responsibility as Chief Executive Officer. The 53-year-old Michael Ruth will become a member of the Executive Board as Chief Finance Officer.
The entire management team of Springer Science+Business Media is leaving the company. The current Managing Director Heike Findeis, Baublatt Publishing Director Renato Polentarutti, Head of Human Resources Peter Jenny and Head of Finance Hans Peter Meier will be leaving.
Until March, Springer Science+Business Media also included Media Daten AG, which publishes Werbewoche. As part of the sale, Media Daten was integrated into Springer's B2B Business, Technology, Transport division.

 Small progress has been made in the struggle for a social plan for the 64 employees affected by the closure of Facts. As the media union Comedia announced on Thursday, the negotiations with Tamedia management have taken place in a constructive atmosphere.  
According to Comedia, those affected reacted with relief at today's editorial meeting that effective negotiations are now being held instead of non-binding talks. Apparently, Tamedia is prepared to make concessions to the workforce on certain points. Further negotiations are scheduled for Friday. This morning, well over 300 employees of the publishing house also expressed their solidarity with the Facts workforce in an internal petition. Meanwhile, the staff committee of the daily newspaper Bund, which now also belongs to Tamedia, wished the Facts employees "good perseverance and much success" in their fight for a "decent social plan".

 According to speculation in Weltwoche, the new newspaper announced by Tamedia will be modeled on the German newspaper Welt Kompakt and take the form of a free edition of the Tages-Anzeiger. The publishing house intends to compete with the new free newspaper .ch with the free paper, which is expected to be published in Berne, Basel and Zurich. The fact that the latest Tamedia child could harm the publisher's own 20 Minuten is accepted. According to Weltwoche, there is another innovation in the online sector: Tages-Anzeiger.ch will be expanded into a national news network with the help of Basler Zeitung and the two Bernese newspapers. Tamedia spokesman Christoph Zimmer did not want to confirm either report: "We do not comment on market rumors". It has already been communicated that Rolf Bollmann will be responsible for the new newspaper project, while former magazine editor-in-chief Res Strehle will take care of the further development of the web platforms. "It is clear that the online area is a very important project for us," says Zimmer.
Thirdly, Weltwoche reports that Tamedia wants to make up for the "dramatic loss of readership" of the Tages-Anzeiger in the advertising-relevant age group of 20 to 39-year-olds. Their share has fallen from 41 to 32 percent within seven years. Zimmer confirmed this figure when asked by Werbewoche. "However, there are also very positive signs: at the beginning of the year, the Tages-Anzeiger was the most successful daily newspaper among the top leaders in the Wemf MACH Leader study. The regionalization strategy is also a major step towards gaining more readers.

The business newspaper Cash bids farewell to its readers with a red curtain on the front page and a big "Goodbye". The last issue shows the top ten stories published in the paper, led by a front-page article on the sale of Jacobs Suchard. This was Cash's breakthrough in 1990, according to the article. The current situation in the media industry is reflected in an interview with Spiegel editor-in-chief Stefan Aust. He is of the opinion that the "flight from paid print is a flight from journalism". However, in view of the discontinuation of Facts and Cash, he was not able to elicit from the Cash people whether Spiegel would really come to Switzerland. After all, he considers it a fairy tale that paid weekly newspapers no longer have a future.
There is no lack of reader reactions in Cash or Facts, the headline reads: "I confess: I will miss Cash". A double-page spread about business people who refused to negotiate with the Ringier publication after a critical article is revealing. These include Daniel Vasella, Valentin Roschacher and Dieter Behringer. Space is also given to the editors, who provide information on what they will now read instead of Cash and which magazine they would prefer: Bilanz, Stocks or Handelszeitung.
 
In the current print edition of Werbewoche you can see advertising reminiscences about Facts and Cash from the archive. 

Television The online archive of Schweizer Fernsehen is partially down. If you currently want to watch a program from Schweizer Fernsehen in the online archive, you are most likely looking down the tubes. Reports produced before 2006 are not available at the sf.tv Internet address. In the case of the Tagesschau, this means seven years, all broadcasts from 1999 to 2005. Instead of the program you are looking for, a corresponding message has been appearing in the playback window for several weeks.  
The reason for the outage was "a loss of data on a SRG SSR video server." Both SF and SRG do not know how long it will take until the archives can be put back online. According to SRG spokesman Daniel Steiner, the raw data is still available and not damaged. The files specially prepared for online access are affected by the defect.
 
Swiss Television is told that dust entered the server room in question during renovation work at SRG in Bern, which led to the damage. However, no one wants to or can confirm this. "We are still clarifying why this could have happened," says Daniel Steiner. It is also unclear whether the damaged data can be reconstructed at all, or whether the raw data has to be completely reformatted for online use.
 
Nick Lüthi

 On Wednesday, the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung (Bz) celebrated its 175th anniversary with an extra edition. The Bz, which is published in Liestal, is the fourth oldest newspaper in Switzerland, as publisher Mathis Lüdin explains in an interview in the special edition. It owes its great age to the founding of the canton of Baselland in 1832: the new canton, which is also celebrating its 175th anniversary in 2007, also needed a newspaper to make announcements.
It was founded under the title "Der unerschrockene Rauracher". It was then renamed eight more times until it was given its current name in 1854. In 1861, the newspaper became the sole property of Matthias Lüdin, great-great-grandfather of the current generation of owners. Since September 2006, it has been published in association with the Mittelland Zeitung (MZ) and from September 16, it will also be published on Sundays with the MZ. It has a circulation of 23,500 copies.

Agriculture Under the claim "Bio Bud. Bring back the taste", Bio Suisse is launching another campaign in collaboration with the advertising agency Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett. This focuses on why Bud strawberries, Bud tomatoes and other Bud products have more flavor than other foods. Every month until the end of the year, Bio Suisse will feature a different Bud product in long-copy advertisements telling what it was like to grow up on a Bud farm. It quickly becomes clear that life on a Bud farm is not always easy. For example, the adolescents or maturing children are attacked by snails and have to do without many other things. But it is precisely these experiences that give the Bud products their character.

 The publishing house Axel Springer is also continuing its digitization strategy outside Germany. It is buying 41.4 percent of the French women's portal Aufeminin.com. The shares are being sold by the platform's founders. Aufeminin.com is present in eight European countries and, according to the press release, is the market leader in Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland. Turnover last year amounted to 13.4 million euros. In May 2007, the company recorded 14.6 million visitors to its website. In addition to operating the online portals, Aufeminin.com has its own server technology for advertising called Smart-Adserver. The company has been selling the technology for managing online advertising campaigns to advertising agencies and website editors since 2003.
Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, commented on the purchase in the communiqué with the following words: "The takeover bid for Aufeminin.com is a further step in our digitization and internationalization strategy." And Andreas Wiele, Chief Magazine and International Officer of the publishing house, points out that women's magazines are the largest market segment in almost every European country. They account for a significant proportion of advertising expenditure.

Concept For the first time, Publisuisse subsidiary MediaSense has specified how it intends to advance the Swiss Radio Pool and radio advertising. July 1, 2007 will certainly be a milestone in the 20-year history of Swiss private radio: on this day, the SRG marketer Publisuisse will become active in private radio brokerage. This entry into the declining radio advertising market means that alongside the intermediaries IP Multimedia (Goldbach Media), Radiotele (PubliGroupe), Spot Promotion and Cover Media, another player is now nibbling at the increasingly scarce radio advertising pie. And the newcomer is potent: it is already the market leader in TV marketing as well as TV and radio sponsorship, enjoys a good reputation in terms of (TV) know-how, service and price reliability and is also starting out with the Swiss Radio Pool (SRP) as a partner: 15 mostly large publisher radio stations in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland with a total reach of around two million listeners. Publisuisse had convinced the SRP with a concept that envisaged "an open placement model and the use of the Publiplan online booking and processing system". According to the spring communiqué, it was also intended to "sustainably develop the radio advertising market". 
Over the past two months, Bernhard Krättli has had to concretize what is meant by such buzzwords. He is Managing Director of MediaSense, Publisuisse's new radio subsidiary, and has now presented the concept to intermediaries, agencies and radio stations.
 
What initially impresses is Krättli's frank analysis of the radio market: IP Multimedia's entry into the radio advertising market six years ago may have broken Radiotele's quasi-monopoly, but it has also led to cut-throat competition and not to additional market share for radio as an advertising medium, says Krättli. On the contrary: the gross-net gap has widened, there are some dumping offers on the market and the radio image is suffering accordingly. The former politically motivated rather than customer-oriented advertising pools and a somewhat antiquated booking procedure by fax and email are also detrimental to the medium and its reputation.
 
The MediaSense concept now aims to find a way out of this situation with three key points: A participation of the SRP radios in the marketer MediaSense, no exclusive marketing of the SRP and - as the centerpiece - a more efficient handling of radio advertising.
 
As far as the ownership structure is concerned, MediaSense is 51% owned by Publisuisse and 49% by SRP members. "This makes MediaSense the only Swiss radio marketer with broadcaster participation," emphasizes Krättli. "We hope that this will lead to closer cooperation between supply and marketing." Both parties are to contribute their strengths with this stake in MediaSense. "Private radio stations can also benefit from Publisuisse's professional image. That's why the SRP wanted to let Publisuisse take the lead," says Krättli.
 
In order to achieve the second point, more efficient processing of radio advertising, MediaSense is making its Publiplan online booking tool available as a kind of industry tool: Not only the SRP, but also all individual broadcasters, intermediaries and media agencies are to be given access and can then use it to handle their national radio advertising. "But we are not forcing broadcasters to book via Publiplan. They are free to stay with the current booking procedure," says Krättli. However, he points out that from 2008 the data from the planning tool Radiomanager will also flow into Publiplan, which will improve handling. "This will bring the medium of radio up to the same level of processing as other media," emphasizes Krättli. This is the basic prerequisite for being able to increase the medium's market share at all.
 
The third point: although MediaSense has the SRP's marketing mandate, it does not have an exclusive lease. "All intermediaries who allocate advertising to the SRP receive the same commission, including MediaSense," says Krättli. The only condition: The SRP must be booked via Publiplan. Anyone who has mastered this tool can book radio advertising online. MediaSense ensures efficient processing for market partners who book online. However, Krättli does not want to say how high the fee for processing will be.
 
Despite the open system, some broadcasters have reservations - primarily political ones (see box): They fear being too closely tied to the SRG. There is also little enthusiasm among broadcasters. One possible reason: both IP Multimedia and PubliGroupe are in the process of developing their own tools and are therefore hardly prepared to take over the Publiplan and pay for the processing. "No problem," says Publisuisse CEO Martin Schneider, "interfaces are possible between the various tools." Nevertheless, Publisuisse is probably in pole position. This is because Publiplan has long been widely used by the larger agencies for TV bookings and dealing with radio adaptation should not be a problem for them. The situation is different with the tools from IP and PubliGroupe: they first have to be introduced to the agencies and radio stations - but whether they want to work with three different tools is another question. But the main thing is that if agencies can plan and book radio without the help of intermediaries in the future, why do they still need intermediaries? In any case, they will have to reposition themselves - or give up.
 
Conclusion: Only time will tell whether the market entry is just a milestone or whether it will also be a turning point for the industry - in one to two years' time, if new customers choose radio as an advertising medium and radio advertising gains market share. Markus Knöpfli
Confusion about agency commission If a marketer books with a broadcaster, he receives an agency commission (AC) of at least 10 percent. If Radiotele books with one of its leased stations, the commission is 12 percent or more. If IP Multimedia books a leasehold station from Radiotele, the commission is at least 5 percent.
It is unclear which sales are granted and demanded by MediaSense. Although Bernhard Krättli has already presented his system to all competing intermediaries, the information is still different. MediaSense demands a commission of 13% from SRP broadcasters and grants the same commission to all intermediaries, according to one competitor. "Initially we receive 10 percent, from 2008 7.5 percent," says another. Krättli remains silent. "I don't want to comment on these figures," he says. (mk)
 

MediaSense suedAt the end of April, the Secretariat of the Competition Commission (ComCo) gave MediaSense the green light. The Swiss Radio Pool's participation in the Publisuisse subsidiary was not a notifiable merger, it said. In the meantime, however, and even before MediaSense officially commences its activities, the ComCo has received "a complaint against Publisuisse and MediaSense", as confirmed by ComCo spokesperson Patrik Ducrey. The ComCo is now investigating "possible abuses of a dominant market position". Further documents have been requested. However, it has not yet been decided whether or not proceedings will actually be opened, Ducrey emphasized. (mk)
 

Comments on the MediaSense conceptIn terms of content, there are question marks over the MediaSense concept. For example, it is not clear in detail under what conditions "non-SRP radios" can participate, criticizes Sunshine Managing Director Marco Meier. Christian Gartmann, Managing Director of Radiotele, has a similar view. "An assessment of the 'open' MediaSense model and Publiplan as a radio tool is currently not possible. Too little information is available for this."
BeO station manager Martin Muerner particularly welcomes the fact that MediaSense wants to increase the market share of radio advertising. But he also wants to measure the newcomer against this claim: "MediaSense must primarily succeed in bringing new customers to the radio and not simply poaching customers from existing agents."
Jürg Bachmann, President of the Swiss Private Radio Association, finds it disturbing from a regulatory perspective that the SRP is opening up access for SRG marketer Publisuisse to a market that was previously reserved for private providers: "There is a social consensus that the SRG is not allowed to broadcast radio advertising; that's what the RTVA says. It is now up to MediaSense to prove its independence from the SRG and its commitment to all private radio stations."