The negotiation poker for the ProSiebenSat.1 broadcasting group appears to be over. The consortium of the two financial investors KKR and Permira has won the bid for the German media company, as reported by the Financial Times Deutschland based on "information from circles close to the negotiations". The current ProSiebenSat.1 owners around the US billionaire Haim Saban have decided in favor of the consortium's offer, the report continues. The price is around three billion euros, as dpa learned from negotiating circles on Thursday. The toughest competitor in the race for the broadcasting group was apparently the Turkish Dogan Group right up to the end, while the consortium led by Apax and Goldman had already dropped out early on (see
). Possible merger with SBS According to the Bavarian state government, the buyers want to merge ProSiebenSat.1 with the European TV group SBS to form one of the largest broadcasting groups in Europe. The merger with SBS would create 'a broadcasting group that extends from Scandinavia to Eastern Europe with Munich at its center', said Bavaria's Minister President Edmund Stoiber. Details of a possible merger of SBS and ProSiebenSat.1 have not yet been clarified. According to Stoiber, however, the headquarters should be in Munich.
A merger of SBS and ProSiebenSat.1 would create one of the largest European TV groups. With 19 free-to-air TV stations and 20 pay-TV channels, SBS claims to reach 100 million people in Europe every day.
Saban benefits According to SDA, representatives from politics, media supervision and the workforce welcomed the sale to Permira and KKR. According to information from industry circles, the new owners do not want to pursue a radical austerity course and leave the current management around CEO Guillaume de Posch in office. For the past three years, ProSiebenSat.1 has been owned by a consortium led by US billionaire Haim Saban. At the beginning of the year, the sale to Springer-Verlag failed due to a veto by the competition authorities. A satisfactory solution has now been found for all sides.
For Saban and the financial investors who accompany him, the investment in ProSiebenSat.1 has paid off. They paid around EUR 7.50 per share when they invested a good three years ago. According to industry circles, the purchase price is now EUR 28 to 29 for the ordinary shares. Even if money was still put into the company, Saban and his investors were able to multiply their investment.
Springer is keeping its options open Springer Verlag in Hamburg is keeping all its options open with ProSiebenSat.1. A spokeswoman for the publishing group said that they would sit down with the new majority owners and discuss the future course. Both a sale of the shares and an increase are conceivable. In addition, everything could remain the same. Springer holds 12 percent of both the ordinary and preference shares in ProSiebenSat.1 and has two representatives on the TV group's supervisory board. Springer originally wanted to acquire a majority stake in ProSiebenSat.1 itself. However, the purchase was vetoed by the competition authorities.

Publisuisse and the Art Directors Club Switzerland (ADC) are presenting the advertising industry with a new event: the ADC Prediction. This event will take place for the first time on Monday, January 15, 2007, at the Kaufleuten in Zurich. All the TV commercials submitted for ADC judging can be viewed there, uncensored and before the ADC jury, and you can put together your own shortlist. Event participants can also bet on which films will be awarded an ADC cube. Whoever comes closest will win a prize themselves. The free happening starts at 12 noon with a snack. The main course will be a screening of the 120 or so commercials submitted. The event will be rounded off with a sweet dessert. All this under the motto "finally a lunch-cinema only with advertising", according to Publisuisse. It is accepting registrations at www.publisuisse.ch/adc.

Tamedia is launching a major Tages-Anzeiger edition, appointing a new Deputy Chairman of the Management Board and expanding its job portals. This was decided by the Tamedia Board of Directors at its last meeting in 2006. The large circulation will be launched in spring 2007 in the Lake Zurich, Zurich Oberland and Zurich Unterland regions. It will be published on Tuesdays and will be distributed by early delivery, according to a press release from the media company. An additional circulation of 170,000 copies is planned. A large print run has been under consideration at Tamedia for some time (see "Tagi: Big plans"
). In the city of Zurich, where the Tages-Anzeiger is also published with a regional split, Tamedia is dispensing with a large circulation. Media spokesman Christoph Zimmer explained the decision to the SDA that the potential for new readers is considerably greater in areas where the Tages-Anzeiger has only just established regional reporting. The total circulation of the Tages-Anzeiger will increase from 225,000 to around 395,000 copies on the day of publication of the large print run. The Tages-Anzeiger is expected to reach around 720,000 readers throughout Switzerland on the day of the large print run instead of the previous 551,000, the press release continues. The Stellen-Anzeiger, which is published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, will remain reserved for subscribers.
New Deputy Chairman of UL In the same press release, Tamedia announces that Christoph Tonini is to become the new Deputy Chairman of the Management Board. He takes over the position from Jürg Brauchli. Brauchli will remain a member of the Management Board as Head of Printing and Logistics. With this decision, the Board of Directors wants to rejuvenate the top management of Tamedia. The 37-year-old Tonini has been a member of the Management Board of Tamedia as Head of Finance since April 2003. In October 2004, he also took over responsibility for the Services division and since December 2005 he has also headed the Newspapers Switzerland division.
 
Job portals expand offering Another BoD decision concerns the two online job portals Jobwinner.ch and Alpha.ch. They are to be significantly expanded. A total of ten new positions will be created in the areas of sales and online production. With the increase in the sales team and new offers for medium-sized and large customers, Tamedia intends to expand the market share of the two job portals in the long term. The two offerings will also be better integrated into Tamedia's newspaper and magazine titles. The awareness of Jobwinner.ch and Alpha.ch will also be increased through intensified marketing measures towards job seekers. According to the press release, the reason for the expansion of the two portals is the continued strong growth of the online job advertisements segment.

Production What agencies should know about the new approaches to networked production...The concept of networked production is quickly explained: the areas of processing/calculation, prepress, printing and finishing should be able to be combined into one large whole using technical aids. Statuses can be reported back, tracked or other (sub-)processes initiated via each sub-process. The first concrete approaches to help the graphic arts industry achieve this kind of end-to-end networking date back to 1995. Under the leadership of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG and together with leading companies from the printing (e.g. KBA, MAN Roland, Komori), prepress (e.g. Adobe, Agfa, Creo, Screen) and finishing (e.g. Müller Martini, Polar-Mohr, Wohlenberg) sectors, the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (Fraunhofer IGD) in D-Darmstadt was commissioned to define, support and monitor a standard which - supported by these suppliers - would help the graphic arts industry to achieve networked and therefore more efficient production. The approach being pursued is also known as CIM or Computer Integrated Manufacturing, which is also known and used in other industries.
CIP3 - the first prankSince Fraunhofer IGD also performs other tasks, a consortium was founded within the institute and together with the initiators. CIP3 - short for "Cooperation for the Integration of Prepress, Press and Postpress" - was intended to help the three areas of prepress, press and postpress, or the "3P", achieve a breakthrough. It should have, because the approach remained such for a long time. Nevertheless, a small part of this networking concept managed to cause a sensation in the industry. More specifically, the PPF (Print Production Format) data container developed by Fraunhofer IGD was used as a transport tool for machine settings. As this approach only makes sense because print shops can save on an expensive plate reader and the set-up times on printing presses can also be significantly reduced, CIP3 was suddenly a hot topic in the graphic arts industry. As a result, the CIP3 consortium failed to understand that the name of the organization and the function of the data container were kept apart in the industry. For a long time, CIP3 data was exchanged between systems instead of the correct PPF data.
An electronic job ticket was responsible for the administrative link between the three areas of prepress, press and postpress. This "portable job ticket", or PJTF for short, was responsible for forwarding the non-technical administrative data from one area to another - i.e. not the data for machine control, but the job-related information such as print run, paper quality, grammage and the customer's contact addresses.
Networking 2.0A lot has happened since the CIP3 consortium was formed. The PDF data format has won its place as an output format in the prepress stage, the Internet and its technologies have become established. And the "data container transport" via PPF has become a discontinued model. Once again, an interest group has formed - this time the companies Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, MAN Roland, Adobe and Agfa - to take account of the changed conditions and to put the networking approach on a new, more stable footing.
However, this approach did not become CIP3.1, but CIP4. The name change goes hand in hand with the new approach of placing more emphasis on the processes (which explains the fourth "P"). And countless of these processes have been defined under the umbrella of the "Cooperation for the Integration of the Processes of Prepress, Press and Postpress" since its official launch in 1999.
The CIP4 approach is also completely different. In future, print production will no longer be based on a linear model that runs from "left to right" or from pre-press to post-press, but on a network-like concept that links a wide variety of processes in all directions. There has also been a paradigm shift in technology: the PPF data container and accompanying job ticket have been replaced by a modern, XML (eXtended Markup Language) based Job Definition Format (JDF), which describes the print job to be produced in its entirety.
From today's perspective, it can be said that what is summarized under the buzzword Web 2.0 - i.e. the weblog and podcast approaches together with the associated technologies such as RSS or Ajax - goes hand in hand with the relaunch of networked production within CIP4 in the graphics industry. CIP4 can therefore be described as "Networking 2.0".
Firstly, thanks to technologies such as the Job Definition format and the supplementary Job Messaging Format (JDF/JMF; see box) co-developed and further developed by the CIP4 consortium, print shops and packaging companies are able to process print jobs more efficiently. Less idle time and shorter set-up times mean higher productivity. Initially, however, these benefits are likely to barely cover the costs that companies will have to bear in order to finance investments in JDF-compatible machines. In the medium and long term, print shops are likely to benefit from "networked production" - even if only in the form of improved customer loyalty.
Thanks to the networking approach, the print shop's ability to provide information becomes more meaningful, as the status of individual processes (plates exposed? print finished?) can be queried at any time. Interestingly, too little attention is still paid to this aspect. Yet, apart from the price, it is the production status that interests print buyers in agencies and companies the most.
Jürgen Franck
 
 
Job Definition and Job Messaging Format mergeBasis of the Job Definition Format (JDF)
is XML (eXtensible Markup Languge). Thanks to this standardized marking language, data can be exchanged between different systems. JDF combines order-describing data (print run, customer, deadlines, etc.) with production-relevant data (formats, ink zone parameters, paper thicknesses, prepress parameters) and integrates the formats previously developed for specific applications such as Job Tickets (PJTF), Print Production Format (PPF) and IFRAtrack (a format originally developed specifically for the needs of newspaper production). In addition to the more production-oriented processes, commercial processes (work preparation, preliminary/post-calculation) can now also be mapped and integrated. The main advantage of this standard is that JDF is also an interface and can be used to combine systems and technologies from different manufacturers into one workflow. The prerequisite is a so-called interoperability test, which every product/solution must pass in order to be JDF-compliant.JMF is the no less interesting component.
As the job messaging format is also XML-based and, as the name suggests, takes care of communication, many options will be open in future thanks to this component. For example, it will be possible to use this interface to update websites (e.g. to display a status) or even to send SMS or e-mail messages. XML also allows production systems to be connected to ERP systems, for example, which opens up further possibilities. (jf)

Research In the recently published November edition of the Net-Audit web statistics, the 20minuten.ch website is one of the new customers listed. This is remarkable in that Peter Wälty, editor-in-chief of the online edition of the commuter newspaper, was previously a critic of these Wemf statistics. In particular, he had repeatedly criticized the fact that the number of unique clients reported by Wemf was not meaningful enough. He had also criticized the fact that no distinction was made as to whether website accesses came from Switzerland or abroad. 20minuten.ch is now reporting its figures after all, which Wälty justifies with improvements to Net-Audit. In the December publication, for example, hits from abroad are shown separately. And thanks to the new Internet research Net Metrix, Wemf will be able to supplement the pure access figures with qualitative data from online surveys from spring 2007 and then finally present real reach data. (mk)

Pius WalkerJust four years after Walker was founded, «the world’s smallest advertising agency» had already made it into the top ten of the creative rankings in 2005. This year, it climbed to sixth place. Pius Walker entered the advertising industry as a graphic designer at Advico Young & Rubicam. This was followed by two years at GGK in Zurich, before he reached the point where he said to himself, «It would be interesting to spend a year abroad.» That turned into a total of ten years, with stints at Springer & Jacoby and Jung von Matt in Hamburg, Leagas Delaney in London, and finally Scholz & Friends in Berlin, where Walker served as Creative Director and Managing Director.
He still loves working internationally with his Zurich-based agency. Walker recently shot a sensational commercial for Fleurop in a London cemetery with Hollywood director Anthony Minghella.
With this budget and the support of Amnesty International, Pius Walker and his partner Hans Beer have enjoyed a veritable shower of gold at national and international competitions this year. 

Alexander Jaggy, the mastermind behind major brand campaigns for Bluewin, Panasonic, Julius Bär, and SBB, was recently named «Communicator of the Month» for Swiss’s latest «Campari Soda» TV commercial. Internationally, his agency, Jung von Matt/Limmat, also won a number of coveted awards. With the «Size» guerrilla campaign for Mini, Jaggy accepted a Gold Lion on behalf of Switzerland at this year’s Cannes Lions. On the same day, Jung von Matt/Limmat was awarded second place as «Media Agency of the Year» for innovative advertising—an honor bestowed upon a Swiss agency for the first time. Alexander Jaggy began his career in 1990 as a copywriter at BBDO in Zurich. Other stops in his career included GGK Zurich, Springer & Jacoby in Hamburg, Jung von Matt in Hamburg, and Springer & Jacoby International in London. After seven years abroad, he returned to Zurich in 2001 for the launch of Jung von Matt/Limmat.
In the spring of 2004, he was appointed Executive Creative Director, and in January 2006, he became a partner. Over the past twelve months, the agency has added prominent clients such as Migros Bank and Health Promotion Switzerland to its roster.
Alexander Jaggy is a member of the board of ADC Switzerland, where he is primarily responsible for the creative school. He is also a member of ADC Germany and a member of the British D&AD. Alexander Jaggy is 36 years old, married, and the father of three children.

Award Advertising Week subscribers can vote to decide who will be crowned "Advertiser of the Year" on January 17. Six candidates are up for election. The beautiful muse will present the Egon to one of them at the ceremony in Zurich's Kaufleuten. Peter Felser

Markus Good

Alexander Jaggy

Uwe Schlupp

Pius Walker

Newspaper Printing Just one year after the KBA Commander 6/2 newspaper offset press went into operation at the Espace Media printing center in Bern, the press was expanded to include two additional printing towers. The expanded system now consists of three identical presses, each capable of printing 72 pages in newspaper format or 144 pages in tabloid format with full four-color production. Espace Media has also invested in expanding its mailroom. According to the press release, the 6/2 concept offers nothing but advantages for the Espace Media Group: high cost-effectiveness due to fewer units, reduced space requirements, lower personnel and investment costs, and higher net production output. 

Print machine manufacturer and solutions provider Heidelberg is optimistic about the future. "Although we have doubled our profit," said Bernhard Schreier, CEO of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg), at a recent press conference, "we cannot and must not sit back and relax." Schreier also provided the reasons for this sentiment, which applies to countries such as Germany and Switzerland: "There is still overcapacity in the market and prices remain under pressure." Overall, however, things are going very well at the moment: "We are producing at the limits of our capacity," said Schreier, describing the current level of capacity utilization.The drive to the EastThe growth markets for Heidelberg are in the East. In the countries that have joined the EU since its eastward expansion, the overall picture is very positive. According to Dr. Walter Stählin, who is responsible for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, the company is expecting economic growth in the Czech Republic and Poland in particular in the coming year - including in the graphic arts industry there. The countries in this "new geographical center of Europe" are among the markets to which the Group owes its profit improvement. The North and South America region is also currently reporting good results. Heidelberg has been able to extend its market leadership in the USA and significantly increase sales. However, Marcel Kiessling, who is responsible for the region, describes the prospects there as rather subdued.
The Asian region has developed particularly successfully for Heidelberg. The Group already generates a full 26 percent of its consolidated sales in the Far East. Bent Mortensen, who spoke of both the opportunities and risks of these markets, confirmed that Heidelberg has good prospects for the future, particularly in China and India.
 
Answers for the upper segment and for digital printing Heidelberg has upgraded its technology. Specifically, Chief Technology Officer Dr. Jürgen Rautert announced two innovations to existing presses. From mid-2007, the Group will be offering the Speedmaster XL 105 sheetfed offset press as a UV version or as a double-coating press. While the UV press can also be used to apply maximum gloss effects to laminated materials, foils or metallized surfaces, the dual-coating press will be an all-rounder: "As an alternative to a pure UV press, the Speedmaster XL 105-LYYL (L = coating, Y = drying unit) can process conventional inks and also apply UV coating inline after applying a primer." Heidelberg is thus rounding off the top end of its most recent and successful XL platform. A perfecting press is expected from Heidelberg at drupa 2008.
The company is also announcing innovations in the lower segment. For example, the Speedmaster SM 52 sheetfed offset press equipped with Anicolor inking units, which was first announced at Ipex, will go into series production at the beginning of 2007, which suggests that the new inking unit will be very well received. Following the very successful market launch, the presses based on the Speedmaster SM 52 series are now to be expanded step by step. Optional die-cutting units for inline die-cutting, UV printing units and eight-color presses will be available in the near future.
According to Rautert, the machine has completely won over the first users. His personal conclusion: "There is no better machine in terms of print quality than the Anicolor." But Rautert goes even further. Thanks to the Anicolor inking unit, which enables very fast inking and set-up, he also sees the machine as particularly competitive with digital printing. "If you leave personalization out of the equation, it is not only competitive with the digital printing system in terms of unit costs, but actually superior to it."
Jürgen Franck

Radio Publishers have taken the reins in the Swiss-German radio industry. In the eyes of many private radio operators in German-speaking Switzerland, 2006 should have been a year of transition. After that, many hoped, things would get better - not primarily in terms of sales, but in terms of cooperation within the scene. But at the end of this year, the mood in many places is subdued, cautiously optimistic at best. In the eyes of those with an overview of the entire industry, too much has gone wrong. On the one hand, there was the marketing idea of IP Multimedia (IP Pool), which it had already served up at too short notice in 2005 and again served up amateurishly this year. The result: a shambles. Marketer Radiotele was then swallowed up by print giant PubliGroupe. And finally, at their fall congress, the publishers agreed to expand the existing Swiss Radio Pool (SRP) to 13 members with the addition of the two radio stations BE1 and Basel 1. Under the leadership of Andreas Meili, Head of Electronic Media at Tamedia, the publishers have thus succeeded in turning the SRP into a pool that not only covers the major centers, but also sorts the radio industry into publisher and non-publisher radio stations: All publisher radio stations are gathered in the SRP (except Radio Munot), the others remain outside the door. This is new for the industry: until now, there have been pools based on (publisher) political and geographical criteria as well as personal preferences, but none for a specific guild.
The main problem for those who remain: They are so scattered that they cannot form a meaningful (counter) pool. And there is another concern for many: The SRP is possibly to be marketed exclusively. In any case, an invitation to tender has been issued for this. But what if an exclusive lease is actually granted? Then it is likely that the unsuccessful bidders will file an antitrust lawsuit, which could block the industry for months or years to come. Should this scenario fail to materialize, a number of questions arise: Would the other marketers be able to make do with the few crumbs that are still available in addition to the SRP? Wouldn't some of them be forced to give up radio mediation? Would national radio marketing then be monopolized in the medium term, as with the medium of cinema? Questions upon questions that are currently only being discussed behind closed doors. Some believe that in the end all radio stations will lose out, especially non-SRP members.
It's not that far yet. Whether the SRP will enter into an exclusive lease is still open, says Andreas Meili on request. By the deadline, "more than three offers" had been received, including "foreign ones", he adds. According to reports, the three marketers Radiotele, IP Multimedia and Publisuisse have also submitted bids, but do not wish to comment.
Which of the three, if any, is most likely to get the exclusive contract? Opinions in the industry are divided: IP has no chance as long as it is also affiliated with Radio Energy Zürich, which is not part of SRP. Publisuisse will probably not want to concede even more market power to the publishers. It already handles DRS radio sponsorship exclusively and also markets SRG TVs fully and TeleNewsCombi semi-exclusively. That leaves the PubliGroup subsidiary Radiotele: it is possibly the ideal candidate, as it offers the greatest synergy from a publisher's point of view with print, TV, cinema, online and mobile. Why else would a pure publisher pool make sense?
 
Markus Knöpfli

René Worni on a difficult liaison When Vorarlberg publisher Eugen A. Russ talks about newspapers, his eyes light up. For him, there is no other medium that contains information in such a concentrated form and whose content could not be more different. From this point of view, newspapers are an image of the world compressed into a few pages, where you can get a global overview faster than anywhere else. Other media can only dream of such simplicity. In the spirit of Russ's bon mot, around 162 German publishers now want to raise awareness of the medium that is regularly declared dead ("Newspapers - those who read, understand") and polish up the dusty image of newspapers. "Newspapers are the number one journalistic medium," says Helmut Heinen, for example, the German counterpart to local publisher president Lebrument and publisher of the Kölnische and Bonner Rundschau. The publishers are advertising with 40 ad motifs in their own newspapers and with radio and TV commercials. Newspapers should (once again) be seen as the medium that enables people to be active members of a democratic society. Apart from the retro groove ("Hey, we've still got printer's ink on our hands!"), such image cultivation would also suit the newspaper makers in the small media country of Switzerland.

But electronic development is merciless. Following the launch of the Cash daily platform, one of Ringier's main focuses will be Blick online. At Tages-Anzeiger, blogs have recently even made their way into the paper, and its neighbors to the north have just launched an Internet offensive on sueddeutsche.de. It remains to be seen to what extent the linking models of print and online will have a binding effect on readership and thus stabilize circulation. The British Sun is even trying a Myspace-style community (with a strong surplus of naked girls.) In this sense, the (unfortunately) departing watch bloggers from 20 Minuten give hope with their assessment after 22 months of the commuter blog: "Thanks to our quality control, 20 Minuten was able to increase its readership by 70 percent from 78,000 to 13,39,000." That's very promising.
René Worni,
Editor