As of May 1, Markus Helbling will take over as Project Manager Euro 2008 at Ringier Publishing. He will coordinate the publishing house's activities and develop new ideas and products for next year's major sporting event. Helbling has held various positions in the sports sector of Swiss television since 2000, most recently as producer of the Sportpanorama program and as project manager for the Olympic Games, according to a Ringier press release. 

 Stefan Raab fights Dieter Bohlen and blows the whistle in the fight for freedom for Max Buskohl. Raab is demanding freedom for the singer Buskohl, who had to leave the RTL casting show "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" voluntarily due to differences with Dieter Bohlen. Raab wants to release him from his contract with RTL and let him perform on his show. Raab has already offered him asylum, along with insurance to cover financial penalties, but the singer did not accept the invitation. Which is why Raab is now taking it one step further and, in old RAF style, blowing the horn for a fight for freedom. Last week, he adorned his studio with banners such as "RTL, Max here, but quickly" and "Hopp, hopp, hopp, performance ban stop". Shortly after his introduction, he presented the motif that is at the center of his campaign: a photomontage that recreates the photo of the kidnapped Hannes-Martin Schleyer sent to the press by the RAF in 1977, but shows Max Buskohl and the letters RTL in the RAF machine gun logo. Buskohl appears to be holding a sheet of paper on which is handwritten: Prisoner of R.T.L. for 196 days.
Raab, a trained butcher, has never lacked for coarseness. And this fight is probably less about Bushkohl's freedom and more about the ratings battle between Raab and Bohlen. It cannot be ruled out that Max Buskohl, who is not even physically present, will be crushed between the two TV warhorses Bohlen and Raab, because every battle has its victims.

The State Policy Committee (SPK) of the Council of States wants to continue to allow reduced postal rates for small-circulation titles in the regional and local press. However, unlike the National Council, it wants to abolish the subsidization of postal taxes for all newspapers and magazines to the tune of CHF 60 million. The SPK of the National Council had previously drafted an amendment to the Postal Services Act
which enables a continuation of the postal tax reduction for the press. The current regulations expire at the end of the year. The National Council envisaged, on the one hand, that Swiss Post would be obliged to grant distance-independent preferential prices at the current level, for which it would be compensated by the Confederation to the tune of CHF 60 million. On the other hand, CHF 20 million per year is to be made available for the transportation of small-circulation items (see ). However, the corresponding committee of the Council of States is now of the opinion that the National Council's proposal is still based on a watering can system in which titles with a large circulation also benefit from the subsidies. It only wants to grant concessions for the promotion of small-circulation titles. The SPK has therefore instructed the administration to reformulate the text submitted by the National Council in such a way that an annual amount is made available to Swiss Post. This should ensure that the subscription costs for daily and weekly newspapers in the regional and local press do not have to be increased compared to the current level. The committee wants the bill to be dealt with in the summer session.

The agency OgilvyOne, which specializes in dialogue marketing, is strengthening its consulting team with a liaison office between offline and online dialogue marketing and has brought Sandra Pellny on board for this purpose. OgilvyOne and its subsidiary OgilvyInteractive have been offering dialog marketing solutions for the electronic sector since 2001. Since then, these areas have become increasingly intertwined. For this reason, a new position has been created at OgilvyOne, which bundles the specialist knowledge that was previously spread across various functions. Sandra Pellny studied Media and Communication Management at the Ravensburg University of Cooperative Education. After gaining experience at a communications agency in Basel, she is now joining OgilvyOne's consultancy team in this newly created role. Her main focus is on campaigns and measures that make central use of both electronic and non-electronic media for dialog between companies and all relevant market participants. These include projects for Alcatel-Lucent, Fujifilm and Pfizer.

The first issue of Antidot, a new weekly newspaper "from the resistant left", will be published on April 27, according to a press release. The newspaper is starting out small but fine, but wants to "sooner or later roll up the media landscape from the bottom left". Antidot will be published in tabloid format and will contain three clearly separated sections: Domestic, International and Culture. At least eleven times a year there will also be a supplement on current topics. The newspaper will be published on Fridays from May 2007. It will be produced by a full-time editorial team with a total of 320 full-time equivalents, spread over 6 people. According to the communiqué, the editorial team is in close contact with the various players on the resistant left and with freelance journalists in various regions of Switzerland and the world. Antidot poses critical questions and aims to be a counterweight to bourgeois mainstream journalism.
"to be smart, moving and exciting", it continues. An advisory board supports and accompanies the work of the editorial team in terms of content and politics. To ensure the survival of the paper, around 2000 subscribers are needed by the end of 2008.

RingierTV is expanding its online video production and bundling these activities in the new WebCenter RingierTV department. RingierTV Managing Director Marc Görtz is heading the new department during the start-up phase. WebCenter RingierTV specializes in the conception, production and marketing of moving images for websites and mobile applications. It also develops cross-media concepts. The pooling of resources is intended to better meet growing needs and bundle production expertise and infrastructure. The unit will work for internal and external clients. Ringier made the announcement on Friday.
An integral part of the RingierTV web center is a VJ pool made up of permanent and freelance employees. In a first step, the video journalists from Cashdaily, who also produce the web video offering for Schweizer Illustrierte, will be integrated into the new department.

With a guerrilla idea for the business platform Cash, the advertising agency Publicis wants to disprove the prejudice that the Swiss are no fun when it comes to money. The agency has developed a viral mailing that compels users to click and plays on both their curiosity and naivety. Publicis wants to offer subtle advertising in its most entertaining form for the Ringier business platform - and hopes that everyone will soon be clicking when it comes to cash. Click here to see the viral mailing.

Dominique von Burg, the designated President of the Swiss Press Council, would like to include publishers in the self-regulatory body. "Anyone who sells a newspaper has an interest in it being credible," said von Burg in an interview with the media magazine Klartext, explaining his view. He is convinced that, in addition to the journalists' associations, publishers should also be part of the sponsorship of the Press Council in order to maintain the value of newspapers: "If one day our information is no longer more reliable than anything that comes from PR departments or is available on the Internet, the newspaper won't even be worth the paper it's written on," said von Burg. Publishers have the same interest in professional ethics as journalists.
Von Burg sees the role of the Press Council as being to make fundamental considerations on questions of professional ethics. It should not relieve editors-in-chief or publishers of their everyday responsibilities. The fact that the Press Council cannot impose sanctions for approved complaints is not a shortcoming for him, as sanctions would not help. He would find the obligation to publish the opinion of the Press Council in the relevant medium interesting.
Von Burg will take over the presidency of the Press Council from Peter Studer at the beginning of 2008. According to Sda, the Press Council was initiated in 1972 by the Swiss Association of Journalists (SVJ).

The Zurich cantonal government has described the federal government's new plans to divide the canton of Zurich into two TV coverage areas as unacceptable. It is also annoyed that the regional broadcaster TeleZüri is not to be awarded any fee money. The federal government's proposals are also contrary to the law, writes the Zurich cantonal government in a statement, according to Sda. According to the law, the TV coverage areas should form a political and geographical unit. At the very least, cultural and economic contacts should be particularly close.
The cantonal government criticizes the fact that parts of the canton of Zurich are to be included in the TV coverage area of north-eastern Switzerland. This concerns the districts of Bülach, Andelfingen, Winterthur, Pfäffikon, Uster and Hinwil. The area of north-eastern Switzerland also includes the cantons of Schaffhausen and Thurgau as well as the St. Gallen constituency of Wil.
The proposal of the federal government for the Zurich TV region is just as unacceptable to the cantonal government. According to this proposal, TeleZüri would be the only regional television station in Switzerland not to receive a performance mandate or a share of the TV fees.
Finally, the Government Council criticizes the consultation period of 14 days. In this short time, it was not possible to make a well-founded statement on the reallocation of the TV regions of Zurich and Eastern Switzerland. The opinion is made more difficult "because the new proposals represent a departure from the principles previously advocated by the federal government, without these being substantiated in concrete terms".

Musician Bob Geldof will take over from Bild editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann for one day at the end of May. Geldof, who has been intensively involved in the fight against poverty in Africa for years, will work with the editorial team to produce an edition of the German tabloid for the G8 summit. This campaign is part of a cooperation between Bob Geldof and Bild in the run-up to the G-8 summit, which will take place from June 6 to 8, 2007 in the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm. Editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann expressed his enthusiasm in a statement from the Axel Springer publishing house: "I am looking forward to being represented for a day by a proven expert like Bob Geldof."
Although Geldof was previously thought to be more of an expert in music than in newspapers, the self-proclaimed helper of the third world certainly has good connections to the celebrity world. So perhaps he can have a little exclusive story about Madonna or Robbie Williams ready for Bild. Let's just hope that Geldof's assignment at the tabloid doesn't fall on a Monday; then the editorial team would hardly come across a boss in a good mood. After all, Geldof sang the legendary song "I Don't Like Mondays" as frontman of the Boomtown Rats...

The advertising marketer Goldbach Media is adding three new seats to its Board of Directors in order to support its targeted growth in the online sector in particular. The three nominees for the new seats are Bruno Widmer, Patrick Eberle and Michael Scheeren. Following his election to the Board of Directors, Bruno Widmer will become Chairman of the Board. He replaces Peter A.C. Blum, who has been Chairman since 2002. Widmer was Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Advico Young & Rubicam and Chairman of the AY&R Group until 1998. From 1998 to 2001, he was Chairman & CEO of Young & Rubicam Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Patrick Eberle was CFO and a member of the Group Management of Tamedia until 2003 and is now Managing Director of Eberle & Partner, a financial management consultancy. Michael Scheeren is a member of the Supervisory Board of United Internet AG and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of AdLink.
The current Chairman of the Board of Directors of Goldbach Media, Peter A.C. Blum, as well as the Vice Chairman Beat Curti and Mr. Ronald Sauser, Mr. Joachim Schoss and Mr. Peter Wagner as members of the Board of Directors are standing for re-election. The General Meeting will take place on May 21.

In future, the Zurich Press Ball will support the aid organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for press freedom and persecuted journalists worldwide. According to Bernhard Sutter, President of the Zurich Press Association, the Press Ball wants to continue to support media professionals, while at the same time adapting the purpose of the charity ball to today's needs. Following an evaluation of various aid organizations by the Frey Communications agency, the decision was made in favour of Reporters Without Borders due to its connection to the media, its international focus and the continuation of the long-standing tradition of helping media professionals.
According to a press release, the Swiss representatives of Reporters Without Borders will be present in person at the next edition of the Zurich Press Ball on October 27, 2007.