Despite the seventh edition of the MZ, those responsible at the Basler Zeitung (BaZ) are remaining calm for the time being. BaZ spokesman Walter Schäfer confirmed earlier statements to the Sda news agency that the company is currently awaiting the results of a market study that has been running for some time before considering its own Sunday edition. However, he added that the company was not surprised by the latest development. The results of the study are expected at the end of March. The study will examine the positioning of BaZ in the market following the relaunch initiated in 2004, the expansion of the regional section of the newspaper last year and other changes. According to Schäfer, one of the questions is whether a seventh edition should be published.

As part of this year's Corporate Communications Award, a special prize will be awarded for the first time: the Media Relations Award recognizes the best media relations work of the year. The sponsor and initiator of this prize is the Sda subsidiary News Aktuell Schweiz, which specializes in the dissemination of media information. For this category prize, a panel of media and PR experts will select outstanding media work on special events such as mergers, crises or IPOs in the period between 1 August 2006 and 31 July 2007. Communications managers from companies, organizations, authorities and PR agencies can apply for the award until 31 May - or they can be recommended.
The Media Relations Award will be presented on September 13, 2007 as part of the award ceremony for the Corporate Communications Award and the Swiss Forum for Integrated Communications at the School of Business of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland FHNW in Olten.

After the idea of broadcasting Euro 08 live on the big screen in 500 places of worship failed, the Reformed churches have come up with something new: Together with the theological faculties in German-speaking Switzerland, they want to inspire young people to study theology. And where better to advertise this unusual course of study than in a place where young people often hang out: the cinema. For four to six weeks in March and November, 250 cinemas will be showing commercials designed to make Christianity appealing to prospective students. The movie theater is the ideal place to address people between 16 and 30. The slogan is: "Theology: that's where you come into the world". If that doesn't convince you yet, you can download the musical motif of the commercial from the corresponding homepage - as a ringtone for your cell phone, of course.

With the new marketing of Cartoon Network, Goldbach Media subsidiary IP Multimedia is opening the first Swiss TV children's pool. It can now be booked with the channels Super RTL and Cartoon Network. According to a press release, the advantages for agencies and advertising clients are more performance at a lower price and a simplified planning and scheduling process. The TV children's pool will optimally cover the Swiss children's segment in French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland. The two channels reach a total of over 1.1 million Swiss people every day and more than one in four Swiss children. In the target group of 3-14 year olds, the TV children's pool achieved an impressive viewer market share of 23.9% throughout Switzerland.
Cartoon Network is a children's channel in French-speaking Switzerland and shows well-known cartoons. In terms of content, it focuses on new series from Cartoon Network Studios and Warner. A new feature for Switzerland is the technical distribution of the Cartoon Network channel to cable network operators. Instead of the previous satellite transmission, the channel's signal is fed to the cable network operator digitally via a fiber optic cable. This cost-effective technical innovation was introduced by the company Ad Insertion Platform.

The boards of directors of the Mittelland Zeitung partner companies involved approved the project for the seventh edition at the end of February. According to a press release, the project work will start immediately so that the Sunday edition of the Mittelland Zeitung can be published on September 16, 2007 with an expected circulation of over 200,000 copies. This confirms what has been rumored since the beginning of the year (see ). Patrik Müller will be editor-in-chief of the Sonntagszeitung. Among the partner companies involved are AZ Medien (Aargauer Zeitung/Limmattaler Tagblatt), Vogt-Schild Medien (Solothurner Zeitung and its head pages), the Dietschi company (Oltner Tagblatt), the Zofinger Tagblatt and the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung. Dietschi is making its definitive agreement dependent on detailed clarifications.  
Sunday edition focuses on regionalization In addition to the national section (news from abroad, Germany, business, sport, lifestyle), which is produced by the Aargauer Zeitung, regionalization and cantonalization are the order of the day on Sundays. The partner publishers are responsible for the journalistic content of their regional and cantonal pages as well as for the front pages. The Sunday edition is conceived as the seventh edition and will be noticeably different from the weekly editions in terms of design, journalistic concept and content.
 
Project creates new jobs The 32-year-old editor-in-chief Patrik Müller is now part of the editorial team of Aargauer Zeitung/Mittelland Zeitung by virtue of his position. Overall journalistic responsibility for the seven editions of Aargauer Zeitung/Mittelland Zeitung lies with the editor-in-chief of Aargauer Zeitung. Müller will take up his new challenge on April 1, 2007. He comes from SonntagsBlick, where he has been head of news/editor-in-chief since December 2004. Müller studied business administration and business education at the University of St. Gallen. During his studies and later as a secondary school teacher at the Zürcher Oberland cantonal school, he worked as a freelancer for the Badener Tagblatt and the Aargauer Zeitung. From the beginning of 2000 until April 2003, he worked as an editor in the business section of the Aargauer Zeitung. He then worked as a political and business reporter for the SonntagsZeitung from May 2003 to November 2004.
Around 25 new jobs are expected to be created in the editorial offices for the publication of the Sunday edition. Recruitment will run parallel to the project work that is now starting. Around twelve positions are earmarked exclusively for strengthening the Sunday section. A further ten to fifteen positions will be spread across the various regional departments of the individual partner publishers. The prepress, printing and, in particular, sales departments also require additional staff. Jobs will be created for around 500 new employees, mainly part-time positions in delivery.
Everything focuses on Sunday The Sunday edition will be integrated into the daily newspaper subscriptions of all partner publishers. According to the press release, the partner companies want to take account of the fact that Sunday has become a reading day. Readership and the advertising market have increasingly focused on Sundays in recent years. The surcharge will be between 50 and 90 centimes per issue. The price models have not yet been finalized. Subscribers in the market area will receive the Sunday edition in their letterboxes by 8.30 am. It will also be available at newsstands throughout Switzerland.
Commercial national advertisements and job advertisements will be placed in the national section. The job market will be moved from Saturday to Sunday. Cantonal and regional advertisements as well as real estate advertisements will appear in the respective regional and/or cantonal pages. The partners of Mittelland Zeitung are still in negotiations with Publicitas, which handles the advertising business for the weekly editions, regarding the marketing of the advertisements.
Within Mittelland Zeitungsdruck, the planned Sunday editions will be printed in Aarau (Aargauer Zeitung, Limmattaler Tagblatt, Zofinger Tagblatt) and Subingen (Solothurner Zeitung, Basellandschaftliche Zeitung). The printing location for the Oltner Tagblatt is still under negotiation. The aim is to achieve the latest possible editorial deadlines and optimized printing costs by consolidating printing at a small number of locations. Distribution will be handled by the companies AZ Medien and Vogt-Schild Medien.
Comedia welcomes decision with reservations In a media communiqué, the media trade union Comedia expresses its delight that the Mittelland Zeitung is launching a new Sunday edition and intends to create jobs as a result. At the same time, however, Comedia finds it a mystery how a high-quality Sunday newspaper is to be produced with an editorial team of only 25 people. It is to be feared that the current editors will be put under even more pressure and that working conditions will deteriorate as a result.

From Thursday, April 12, Swiss television will be broadcasting the new science magazine "Einstein". Jann Billeter, Monika Schärer and Mario Torriani will host the program, which reports weekly on everyday phenomena and mysteries as well as current scientific topics. In alternating roles, two presenters will lead the show every Thursday - one person will present in the studio, while the other will be on location for the TV audience during experiments and share their experiences with viewers.

Over 300 publications have already been registered for the Best of Corporate Publishing (BCP) competition. Due to the enormous response and by popular demand, the submission deadline for the competition has been extended: the application period will not end on March 9 as originally planned, but on Friday, March 23, 2007, giving service providers and publishers two more weeks to register online. A total of 28 awards will be presented in the categories Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer as well as Employee Communications, Newsletters and Special Publications. New this year is the "Electronic Publishing" category, in which electronic magazines, newsletters and mobile communication services will be honored.
This year, the Federal Association of German Press Officers is presenting the awards for employee magazines and newspapers as well as the newly created award for annual reports. Together with the BCP's main sponsor Steinbeis Temming Papier, the jury will award a prize in the "recycled paper" category. For the first time at the BCP 2007, a special prize will be awarded in the "Printing Innovation" category in cooperation with Verlag Deutscher Drucker. The jury will also have the opportunity to recognize companies for an overall communication concept with the "Media Integration" award.
The BCP Awards Ceremony will take place on June 27, 2007 following the international BCP Congress in Munich. This year's largest conference on corporate publishing in Europe is entitled "Print meets Digital: Corporate Publishing Media for the 21st Century". The BCP competition is organized by Forum Corporate Publishing (FCP) together with the media partners Acquisa, Horizont and Werben&Verkaufen.

Nico Keramaris has been appointed Managing Director of Mediabox Print as of March 1, 2007 and will take over the operational management with immediate effect. This is due to the realignment and the massive expansion of the product range that Mediabox Print undertook at the beginning of the new year. A broader range of youth magazines and independent titles will now be offered, providing advertising customers with a new and much broader selection of young print media. For Nico Keramaris, the new position means a return to his old place of work. From 2003 to 2005, he was responsible for sales and publicizing the Youth Pool. He then worked for two years as Key Account Manager TV at IP Multimedia. In return, Sandro Proietto will take over central sales management and partner support for Mediabox Below-the-line.

Since March 1, 2007, Bettina Marxer has been ad interim head of the children's editorial department at Schweizer Fernsehen (SF). She succeeds Josef Burri, who will continue to oversee international contacts with providers of fictional programs and licenses. Bettina Marxer (41) has been with SF since 1995. She currently oversees "The Gameshow" as editor and producer and is deputy head of the children's editorial department. After studying at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zurich, she earned her doctorate in Modern German Literature in 2000.

What the Oscars are to the film industry, the CAt Award is to the call center industry. It is presented annually in late February at Call Center World in Berlin to recognize outstanding achievements in the world of call centers. This year, for the first time, a call center service provider from Switzerland received the award: Balz Kundert, the call center manager at Liberty Call in Wallisellen, had the honor of accepting the CAt Award. He and his team were recognized for implementing a specialized quality management system that, in addition to internal quality metrics, primarily incorporates direct customer feedback all the way down to the employee level. 
According to Presseportal.ch, Liberty Call and Extratel together form the SCM Group, which, with over 500 employees at its locations in Basel and Wallisellen, is the largest call center service provider in the Swiss market.

As surprising as Fabienne Louves' victory is the show's good viewer rating in the Betty TV poll. Only 13 percent of those who voted said that the much-criticized format had finally had its day, while 43 percent of respondents were in favour of another season in two years' time.  
Thanks to the Betty TV remote control, which allows more direct interaction between the medium and the audience, the first survey results on viewer favorability are available just one day after the finale of the third season. Despite the moderate ratings, the verdict is favorable: When asked what grade viewers would give the show, 32 percent rated "Musicstar" as unsatisfactory, while a whopping 12 percent gave the casting show a straight six. When asked whether there should be a fourth season of "MusicStar", 43 percent answered positively, 26 percent wanted a new concept, 18 percent wanted a two-decade break and 13 percent did not want to hear anything more about it. This was reported by the Betty TV media agency Richterich & Partner on Monday.

The 48-year-old Diego Yanez has been appointed as the new head of news at Swiss Television by the editorial board. It is not yet clear when he will take over from Jürg Lehmann, who will be devoting his time to "special projects for the editorial team".  
In his new role, Yanez manages the day-to-day business, coordinates the current affairs programs and is responsible for the correspondents. He is also one of two deputy editors-in-chief. How it
according to an SDA report on Monday, Yenez has been deputy editor-in-chief and topic planner at "10 vor 10" for two years. He has been with SF since 1989, with interruptions.