The full-service agency for interactive media The Eyecatcher has programmed the online game for the first photonovela "WE LOVE - die Goldkinder". The game, which the Zurich agency realized in collaboration with Orange, is designed to generate as much attention as possible for the mobile novela, according to a press release. Anyone who wants to take part in the game uploads a picture of themselves to the Orange website, poses next to their favorite star from the photo novela and invites people to vote - whoever gets the most votes wins.

Around two weeks ago, the Lowe Worlwide agency network announced that it would be drastically reducing the number of agencies. Lowe Switzerland is also affected. In the meantime, the Zurich agency has opted for a management buyout. "I am currently working on putting together a good team - further information regarding the agency name, number of employees and choice of structure will follow in mid-May," agency boss Kurt Schmid told Werbewoche. However, it is currently certain that Daniel Brüngger, Managing Director of the Lowe Direkt direct marketing department, handed in his notice at the end of April. Lowe Worlwide, which belongs to the Interpublic Group, is reducing its agency portfolio from 83 branches to 36. However, only eight of these will remain fully owned by Lowe in the form of hubs worldwide, with the Group taking a stake in the rest.

The new pay-TV channel Arena and holder of the Bundesliga pay-TV rights has opted for its own decoder. Football fans who currently still receive the Bundesliga on Premiere via satellite will now need the new decoder to decode the signal in the new season. Arena relies on the Cryptoworks system for encryption, for which the existing receivers are not suitable. New devices are already available from various manufacturers. No new decoder is needed for reception via cable. However, reception via cable is currently only guaranteed in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse; an agreement with the largest network operator Kabel Deutschland has not yet been reached.

The delivery and distribution organization Zuvo has filed an application for a super-provisional injunction to prevent the delivery of the first Sunday edition of Südostschweiz. The application relates to the contract between Südostschweiz Pressevertrieb AG and Zuvo, which in turn is a company of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Tamedia media house. Südostschweiz Pressevertrieb AG is 65 percent owned by Südostschweiz Mediengruppe and 35 percent by Zuvo. It also distributes the SonntagsZeitung, the NZZ am Sonntag and the SonntagsBlick. In the cooperation agreement in question, a competition clause stipulates that the Board of Directors must agree on the distribution of additional titles, as Hanspeter Lebrument told Werbewoche. The Board of Directors of Südostschweiz Pressevertrieb AG is chaired by Hanspeter Lebrument.
Tamedia press spokeswoman Franziska Hügli confirmed the SDA news agency's request that Zuvo had filed the said application with the responsible judge, but did not want to provide any further information. At the media conference in Zurich on Wednesday, Südostschweiz publisher Hanspeter Lebrument also reported on the super-provisional injunction, of which he was informed shortly before the press conference. He was unimpressed and assured that the newspaper would be published either way. At the media conference, Lebrument promoted the new Sunday edition of his newspaper and justified the launch primarily with the development of the advertising and readership market. However, Lebrument also hopes that Südostschweiz am Sonntag will strengthen the independence of his media group and improve its market position vis-à-vis the major Zurich publishers Tamedia and NZZ.

Time Warner, the world's largest media group, posted a net profit of 1.5 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2006 - compared to 915 million dollars in the same period last year. Turnover rose by one percent to 10.5 billion dollars, as the New York-based company announced on Wednesday. The television and film division is responsible for the good result, reports the news agency SDA. On the other hand, Time Warner recorded a drop in profits at the Internet company AOL and in the print division.

Dieter Hahn, a confidant of Leo Kirch, placed financial advertisements in national daily newspapers such as the FAZ and SZ on Wednesday. These are intended to persuade other Deutsche Bank shareholders to take part in further proceedings against the bank, reports the news agency Reuters. According to the Federal Court of Justice, Deutsche Bank and the former head of Deutsche Bank, Rolf Breuer, are obliged to pay Kirch damages. However, the amount must be negotiated in further proceedings. According to current case law, the bank's Supervisory Board is obliged to take recourse against Breuer, but has waived this right. Kirch therefore wants to get Deutsche Bank to make Breuer pay - including court costs. To do this, however, he needs at least 1% of the share capital or 100,000 euros on his side. The cause of the legal dispute is a television interview from 2002: Kirch accuses Breuer of having doubted his creditworthiness and holds this statement responsible for the collapse of his company.

The Sun Store pharmacy chain is allowed to advertise via its partner health insurance companies that it does not charge patient and pharmacy fees to their members. The Federal Supreme Court has ruled that this does not constitute unfair competition. The Geneva Pharmacists' Association had filed an unsuccessful lawsuit. In its reasoning, the Federal Supreme Court stated that the advertising published by Sun Store was neither unlawful nor deceptive and that the information did not violate the law against unfair competition. Comparative advertising of this kind is permissible. It promotes market transparency and allows consumers to make the most favorable choice for them. In the opinion of the Federal Supreme Court, the regular mailing of the disputed information by the partner cash registers does not constitute a particularly aggressive sales method that is frowned upon.

The international media company Bertelsmann recorded significant revenue and earnings growth in the first quarter of 2006. According to a press release, consolidated revenues rose by 17.3 percent from 3.8 billion euros to 4.5 billion euros. Operating EBIT grew by 35.2 percent to 215 million euros and reached a record level. The company's profit doubled: after €48 million in the same quarter last year, it amounted to €90 million for the first three months of 2006. Bertelsmann invested around 309 million euros and, as expected, debts amounted to 3.9 billion euros. Since December 31, the number of employees has risen from 88,516 to 89,409.

Bertelsmann reports that the positive business development in the divisions is responsible for this development and confirms the forecast of a noticeable improvement in revenues and earnings for 2006. A possible partial IPO in the course of the year remains to be seen.

On May 3, 2006, Press Freedom Day, the media union Comedia is calling for more media freedom in Switzerland. Journalists who publish secrets and confidential information from politics and administration should no longer be punished. In particular, Comedia is calling for the abolition of Article 293 of the Criminal Code and the corresponding Article 106 of the Military Criminal Code. To this end, the Federal Council and Parliament are being asked to support Josef Lang's motion to repeal Article 293 of the Criminal Code. The journalistic betrayal of secrets is not a criminal offense, but a job. Comedia is supported in this request by the journalists' organization Impressum and the Federal Chancellery recently made a similar proposal.
The union is also calling for a new collective labor agreement for media professionals in German-speaking Switzerland and Ticino, as well as concrete improvements to the framework conditions and working conditions of journalists and photographers. In addition, there is the demand for binding recognition of press and BR ID cards for the security forces.

Zurich-based Factor Design has won an attractive new client in Migros. As the agency announced on Tuesday, an initial project involves the redesign, positioning and differentiation of two product lines in the non-food sector. The high level of design, conceptual strength and creativity were the success factors that convinced the project manager for packaging design at Migros. Factor Design specializes in branding, corporate and packaging design and has 46 employees in Zurich, Hamburg and San Francisco.

On May 3, 2006, the Handelszeitung (HZ) will be published with a revised appearance and a new concept. The latter is characterized on the 56 pages by a strong expansion in the area of financial reporting, which is already expressed in the subtitle: HZ, which now comprises two instead of four volumes in the main section, now defines itself as a "Swiss business newspaper for companies and finance". The two HZ volumes are also entitled "Unternehmen" and "Finanz". The stock market section and price lists have also been expanded. The stock market pages are now produced and marketed in cooperation with the Frankfurt-based vwd group, the leading specialist for listings in German-speaking countries.
More importantly, the cooperation with the Wall Street Journal that began in the fall, which was previously limited to the exchange of articles on the websites handelszeitung.ch and wsj.com, will now also be reflected in print form at the HZ: In the future, the paper will publish WSJ articles on two pages in the second issue every week. Publisher Ralph Büchi hopes that this will boost his paper's profile in terms of financial expertise. The HZ also clearly expresses this visually: the original WSJ lettering will be placed prominently in the newspaper headline - as part of the subtitle - next to the new two-color HZ logo. The entire visual appearance of the HZ was created by the newspaper designer Katja Hösli from Eastern Switzerland. The advertising campaign for the new trade newspaper was designed by the Jung vom Matt/Limmat agency and will also be launched on May 3.

Ringier Verlag recently merged various service departments, such as the RDB image archive and the Corbis image database, under the Specter umbrella brand. The aim was to transfer existing administration systems and the old image webshop into one software solution. Specter has various service operations: photo studios, a photo laboratory, electronic image processing, a pre-press department as well as a text and image archive. The new administration software meets the requirements of all these departments. A central billing system also enables the automation of routine processes and solves the problem of where-used lists. The where-used list is a special feature of image license sales. First, a customer can select and download images from Specter's online image store. If the customer downloads high-resolution images without a watermark, they must provide proof of use within one month. This means that they must declare where and in what size they wish to publish the image in question. Once the customer has provided this proof of use, the image license is automatically invoiced. If the customer does not use the image, only a fee for the download is due.
Ringier subsidiary Previon, provider of modern and integrated information management solutions, has realized the new image store for Specter. Together with Ergon Informatik, Taifun, the order management and billing system, and the DC5 image archive software from Digital Collections were combined to form a complete webshop solution.