For those who missed the premiere of the Cannes reel presentation on September 6 at the Maag Music & Eventhall, help is now at hand: the "Swiss DVD's Of Cannes'06" are here. Cinecom, together with its long-standing partner Swissfilm Association, is launching this year's Cannes reel on DVD for the second time. The award-winning commercials are available in a double DVD box together with the Swiss Reel'06 (all the films submitted from Switzerland this year) for 280 francs.

After the Liechtensteiner Vaterland, the Liechtensteiner Volksblatt is also changing its corporate form. Until now, the Liechtensteiner Volksblatt press association has acted as publisher, which will continue to exist for the time being, according to publishing director Dani Sigel in an interview with the SDA news agency. As of October 1, the publishing company will be Liechtensteiner Volksblatt AG, which was founded on September 14.
 
The company's Board of Directors is chaired by former Liechtenstein Foreign Minister Ernst Walch. The changes will make the company form "more flexible and agile", says Walch in an interview with Volksblatt. The newspaper is currently in its 129th year of publication with an annual turnover of around six million. It is the mouthpiece of the Progressive Citizens' Party (FBP). The newspaper of the Vaterländische Union (VU), Liechtensteiner Vaterland, also separated from its press association at the beginning of 2003 and has since belonged to the Vaduz media house.

Various changes are taking place in Tamedia's staff departments. Bettina Gubler and Frank Kohtz will take over as interim heads of Human Resources Management until a new head is appointed. Gubler (38) is responsible for projects in Human Resources Management and has been with Tamedia since 1998. Before that, the lawyer worked as a legal advisor in the legal department. Kohtz (56) has been Head of Salary Administration at Tamedia since 2000. Prior to that, he headed the Human Resources department at the Swica health organization in Winterthur.
 
The Head of Legal Services, Sandro Macciacchini, will be taking several months' unpaid leave on October 5. Until his return in spring 2007, Sandra Hanhart (34) will take over as Head of Legal Services ad interim. She has been working as a legal consultant for Tamedia since April 2004. Prior to that, she worked as a lawyer in a Zurich law firm, particularly in the field of media and intellectual property law, and lived in New York, where she completed further training and worked on her dissertation in copyright law. 
Christoph Zimmer (29) has been appointed interim Head of Corporate Communications at Tamedia. He has been working for Tamedia since June 2006. After completing his journalism and communication studies at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Zimmer was editor at drs.online in Berne. Prior to this, he completed a lengthy internship at Facts.

The French-speaking Swiss newspaper Le Matin has been ordered to pay French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy a symbolic franc in damages. The paper had reported several times on the marital crisis in the Sarkozy household (see ). The civil court in Thonon-les-Bains, France, found the newspaper guilty. It had violated the politician's privacy on several occasions. In addition to the compensation payment, Le Matin must also pay the court costs of 1,200 euros.
 
Sarkozy's lawyer criticized the manner of reporting in court. In addition to damages, he therefore also demanded that Le Matin publish the verdict in the editions intended for France and on its website. However, the court did not accept this request and deemed it disproportionate. Editor-in-chief Peter Rothenbühler was satisfied with the outcome. He had actually expected a less lenient verdict, writes the news agency SDA. Incidentally, the couple have reconciled since the Le Matin articles.

Since the beginning of the year, the Assai agency has been responsible for the overall communication of the Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge brands in Switzerland. In addition to the classic measures, the tasks include literature, dialog marketing and showroom design for the various DaimlerChrysler brand agencies. Dodge is a new brand launch in the Swiss automobile market. Assai is a digital and dialog-oriented communications agency that works for national and international companies. 

At the end of November, Swiss presenter Anna Maier is moving to the German private channel Sat.1, where she will host the new show "You can dance" (see ). But she can ask her future boss Roger Schawinski for an interview dance even before she starts work: She will be interviewing the Sat.1 boss at the industry event Screen-up & Congress next Tuesday. Incidentally, he is not unknown to her as a superior. After all, Maier worked for Tele Züri before moving to Schweizer Fernsehen SF.

Price watchdog Rudolf Strahm has called for cheaper digital TV converters for cablecom customers. The cable network operator was charging too high prices for the so-called set-top boxes, which are necessary for converting to digital television. The set-top box costs CHF 495 to buy and CHF 15 to rent for the first 6 months and CHF 25 thereafter. In the EU, such boxes cost between 50 and 80 euros, as reported by SDA. "Cablecom now has a monopoly not only on the cable network, but also on the boxes," confirmed price watchdog Rudolf Strahm in an article in the free newspaper 20 Minuten on Thursday.  
He is also bothered by the fact that Cablecom encrypts its digital offering so that only its own devices can be used. According to the price watchdog, customers can buy and use unencrypted set-top boxes from other Swiss network operators. Strahm is therefore demanding that Cablecom either share the key with all manufacturers or massively reduce the prices for the devices. Cablecom did not wish to comment on this when asked by SDA.
 
The background to Strahm's demand is Cablecom's announcement on Tuesday that two previously analog channels from its program offering will only be shown digitally in future (see
). This is part of the company's strategy to drive forward the digitization of television. Cablecom justifies the channel shift from analog to digital signal distribution with the "increasingly scarce frequencies".  
According to an agreement with the price watchdog valid until the end of 2006, Cablecom must offer at least 37 analog channels in its television service. This minimum limit has already been reached in certain areas, Strahm told SDA. He was unable to comment on the negotiations for a new agreement at the present time.

Teenagers and 90-year-olds have the same favorite product: energy drinks. Two thirds of all syrup lovers are adults, most of them childless. And bald heads and blondes meet in front of the yogurt rack and both reach for the mocha cup. These are the interim results of a Migros people's competition. It was launched by the Zurich advertising agency Publicis in June with the question "And what is your favorite product" (see ). The competition site already has over 200,000 visitors; the campaign runs until the end of November.
 
Publicis is communicating some of the results in a new TV commercial and in a new print and POS wave. Other favorite results can be viewed on and the Migros magazine also presents stories and connections between customer segments and products in every issue. By the way: Migros has also recently started acting as a dating agency. On the competition site, searchers can find their dream partner under the heading "Meet like-minded people". Or at least someone who is also crazy about the same favorite product.

In 2010, the market volume for film downloads in Western Europe is expected to amount to 690 million euros. This is the conclusion of a study by Screen Digest and Goldmedia. This means that rapid growth is imminent; in 2005, movie fans in Western Europe spent around 10 million euros on downloads. However, downloadable movies make up only a small part of the entire film business. For the DVD business in Western Europe, for example, sales of 5.7 billion euros are forecast for 2010. Nevertheless, movie downloads also appear to be making a dent in the DVD business: Revenues from rentals and sales fell by 8 percent between 2004 and 2005. The authors of the study believe that an important prerequisite for more people downloading films is the increase in broadband connections. An obstacle, however, is the fragmentation of the market. According to the study, there will hardly be a clear market leader à la iTunes in the music sector when it comes to legally downloadable films. For consumers, it also plays a major role whether they can burn the films onto DVD and play them on television. Restrictive rights management could put users off. Technically complicated download processes also keep users away. According to the study, pricing is also a decisive factor: many platforms now offer movie downloads that are more expensive than DVDs. According to Screen Digest, this is slowing down development.

The Rhaeto-Romanic daily newspaper La Quotidiana from the Chur-based Südostschweiz Mediengruppe celebrated its tenth anniversary on Thursday. Federal Councillor Christoph Blocher was also among the well-wishers, as reported by the SDA news agency. He described the newspaper as an important mouthpiece of Rumantschia, which wants to live diversity of opinion and language. But Romansh has to prove itself in everyday life. The paper has around 5500 subscribers and is produced in Illanz. To mark the anniversary, La Quotidiana is being published with a 24-page anniversary supplement.

The Hamburg advertising agency Springer & Jacoby is facing financial disaster. As Horizont.at reports, former executives are demanding a buyback of their shares from the company's own investment program in the advertising holding company 3E. Springer & Jacoby owns 49 percent of this company. According to the contract, the agency should have made the former employees a buyback offer within four weeks of their departure. As this did not happen, there is now a threat of claims amounting to one million euros. Springer & Jacoby is already sitting on a mountain of debt amounting to 13 million euros. Following the failed takeover by Elephant Seven, Scholz & Friends is currently being discussed as a potential buyer.

The web service provider Namics has developed a new website for Rivella. The changes are comprehensive and affect design, navigation, structure and content. The design of www.rivella.ch is intended to reflect the dynamism of the traditional Swiss company, according to a press release. Flash animations guide visitors to Rivella red, Rivella blue, Rivella green and Michel. The claim "Show your colors", familiar from the advertising campaign, is thus continued on the Internet. In addition to German and French, the information is now also available in Italian. The event section has been greatly expanded and enables a targeted search for the desired information. The website is supplemented with a fun section for downloading e-cards, video streaming and ringtones.