Column Media makers often react to terror with scaremongering instead of clarification, especially in Italy. Vacation impressions from the summer news front: I really did treat myself to some time off this time. And for a media person, a news junkie like me, that meant no television for three and a half weeks, very little radio and at most an Italian daily newspaper once or twice a week. It was also easy to give up because German or English-language newspapers hardly ever reach our retreat in Calabria. And because, spoiled by Swiss and German papers, we can only shake our heads at how little the readers of supposedly quality newspapers such as Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica or Il Tempo learn about non-Italian matters. As long as such papers are published in the middle of Europe, we should stop complaining haughtily about the ignorance of the Americans, just because the Des Moines Register or the Wisconsin State Journal also hardly carry any foreign news in the pampas of the Midwest.Wherever I picked up snippets of news - after the attacks in London and Sharm-el-Sheik, there was only one topic in Italy for weeks: the probability of the next terrorist attack by Al Qaeda hitting a target in our own country. Academics like to cite a radio program by Orson Welles as a historical example of strong media effects. It caused a panic in the USA in the 1930s because listeners took the radio play "news" of an alien invasion at face value. It may be that something like this could no longer happen to us hardened media users today.
However, everyday conversations with Italian friends and acquaintances showed that the fear of further terrorist attacks, which the Italian media is almost sadistically stirring up, is deep in everyone's bones. What the Italian media, on the other hand, hardly communicate: On the one hand, how the population, especially in the south, is still terrorized on a daily basis by the Mafia, Camorra and N'Drangheta; and on the other hand, how low the risk is of personally becoming a victim of an Islamic suicide bomber. To put it bluntly, it is not your life that is in danger when you board an airplane, but when you cross a crosswalk in Italy.
What damage has the Al-Qaeda hysteria done to Italian tourism, for example? Anyone who is aware of the widespread fear of flying south of the Alps and has experienced how many people euphorically applaud their Alitalia pilot after a routine landing can appreciate this.
But the Italian media makers - there are still very few of them - have not only acted irresponsibly, but also unimaginatively, even fatuously. Unimaginative, because especially in the summer slump, when the PR machinery is not feeding the media as reliably as usual, a thousand other topics would have been waiting to be "discovered" by journalists. And simple-minded, because in their lack of willingness to self-reflect they obviously don't think about who they are working into the hands of. In the competition for ratings and circulation, journalists become accomplices to terrorism faster than they can imagine. Yet they are actually paid to think quickly and not thoughtlessly.
Incidentally, I am making the above request for mitigation in the event that Werbewoche readers who have consumed Italian media more avidly than I have in the last four weeks have come to a completely different impression. As I said, this time it's more about impressions than an empirically substantiated content analysis due to being on vacation.
> Stephan Russ-Mohl is a professor of journalism at the University of Lugano.

WW: What do you think of the current changes at the major US media groups such as Time Warner, Disney and Viacom? Eli Noam: These media groups have become too big, bigger than the ability of many managers to manage them well, so they are falling apart again. It's not even so much about the personalities of these managers, but simply that they have become too diversified for it to make sense to bring them together under one roof. The era of mergers has reached its peak and the tide is turning in the opposite direction. To what extent does this also affect the families that run these conglomerates? News Corporation, for example, has not been able to resolve the succession issue.
It looks like the era of conglomerates controlled by a semi-dynasty is coming to an end in the US. This can be seen at NewsCorp, but above all at newspaper publishers. Continuing this policy at all costs when there are no suitable successors drastically reduces the value of such a company. Rupert Mudoch in particular has always left his personal mark on News Corporation. Just think, he started with a newspaper and now heads a global media empire. Abroad, the personal touch in such entrepreneurial families is even greater than in the USA, just think of Bertelsmann or Springer.
In the USA, media companies are falling apart, but in Germany, Axel Springer Verlag recently bought Germany's largest TV station ProSieben Sat 1 and is continuing to grow. Is the trend going in the opposite direction?
Springer is primarily a newspaper and magazine company; it has not quite reached the scale and complexity of a conglomerate like Viacom. The size of a media company has to be enormous to keep up with the other competitors in the USA, whereas in a smaller country like Germany, fewer properties are enough to be at the top.
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In the article "Polarization of technologies" in issue 23, the table "Imaging of printing plates" on page 22 contains an error, citing the "long optical path with high expenditure for distortion correction" as a disadvantage of thermally operating flatbed recorders. This applies to conventionally designed single-beam flatbed
machines that work with polygon spinners. However, this disadvantage does not exist with the KPG Newsletter. With it, the imaging head is traversed over the plate at an extremely short distance from it. Furthermore, the section "Trends in the plates" on page
25 the statement that UV-resistant sheets remain stable against the aggressive special detergents and UV inks, giving the impression that UV-resistant sheets are only protected against possible copying effects caused by the UV dryer. We apologize for the two errors.

The freicom relationship management and
kommunikation ag ended the first half of 2005 with an increase in sales of
of around 19.5 percent. With 34 employees
Employees at the locations Zurich, St.Gallen, Balgach and Amriswil
successfully completed major projects with existing customers
and new customers were acquired.(pr) The freicom relationship management and
kommunikation ag with offices in Zurich, St.Gallen, Balgach and
In the first half of 2005, Amriswil achieved an increase in sales of around
19.5 percent compared with the first half of the previous year.
The increase in operating income to approximately CHF 3.2 million for the
According to owner Reinhard Frei, the first half of the year is due to the successful
Activity in all four areas of the company - marketing and
Advertising, public relations, project and event management -
attributable.

Jobs created
"With new clients and successfully executed mandates for existing
customers, we were not only able to increase our sales, but also to win new
create jobs," says Reinhard Frei. The company employs
currently 34 employees, six of whom are in
Training positions: freicom ag attaches great importance to promoting the
and is training several apprentices in the commercial and
design area. At the same time, one
Annual internship position as well as several internship positions with
occupied for different durations.

Projects successfully completed
In the first half of 2005, the event management business in particular was able to
several major projects were successfully completed. freicom ag
organized various sophisticated anniversary events for the
Debrunner and Acifer Group, Leica Geosystems, and Sefar Holding AG.
"The anniversary events have been exceptionally successful, and we have
proved that we are the right partner for the overall organization of
are large customer, employee and anniversary events," says
Roger Tinner, Head of Event Management and co-owner of the
freicom ag.

New customers acquired
A large number of projects in the past six months were completed with
existing customers to success. At the same time
gained renowned customers. With the new trade fair projects "Swissvital
and "Messe Oberthurgau MEOT", the project management division was
strengthened. The health and wellness fair "Swissvital" will be held from 28.
April to May 1, 2006 will be held in Zurich for the first time, while the
"Messe Oberthurgau MEOT" from 24 to 29 May 2006 in Romanshorn
is carried out. The two projects complement the wide range of
Trade fair projects designed and implemented by freicom ag.

freicom wants to grow further
After making the leap to the top 6 in the industry in 2004 (ranking of the Federal
of the Swiss PR Agencies BPRA), freicom ag intends to
remain on course for growth. On the one hand, it intends to do this from
do on its own and, on the other hand, through close cooperation with
important partners. But further takeovers are also an issue,
Reinhard Frei explained.

On September 14, shortly before 6 p.m., the
The first PARTEI election commercial was shown for 90 seconds on ZDF. This
is the first of a total of four dates on which the PARTEI will present its
is allowed to show election advertising on television. It stands as a "party for
Labor, the rule of law, animal welfare, elite support and grassroots democracy
Initiative" for, among other things, the redistribution
Germany, including the construction of a new wall. Currently, the
PARTEI with the auctioning of airtime intended for election advertising on Ebay on
itself
attentive. Martin Sonneborn, Chairman of the PARTEI and at the same time
Editor-in-chief of the satirical magazine Titanic, explains to the
Netzeitung is very open about why he uses product placement (e.g. for "Waffen,
tobacco products, spirits") in the
election commercials: The money raised should be used for
a sleazy, populist and low-level election campaign against "the
Merkel". The fact that his product placement plans have been stopped
Sonneborn doesn't believe that this will happen: ZDF "will only realize that,
when the commercial has already run, according to everything you know about the
Public broadcasters know".

TiVo, a pioneer in the field of digital
video recorder (DVR), was able to increase its sales in the 2nd quarter for the first time in the company's history.
recorded a slight profit. 10.8 million in the previous year.
dollars, the US company has now achieved a net profit of
240,000 dollars. However, this is no reason to get stuck in the black.
to get used to, says CEO Tom Rogers, because the growing competition in the
DVR market is causing the company problems. With the sale of its own
devices, TiVo only made 4.6 million dollars, compared with
18.6 million dollars. However, the company was able to
Service and Technology division increased sales by 46 % to 40.7 million
dollars. TiVo now has a total of 3.6 million subscribers,
2.3 million from the partnership with DirecTV
come. However, this cooperation has been somewhat clouded since DirecTV
has announced that it will no longer offer TiVo devices in future. Rogers wants to
therefore invest proactively in marketing and increasingly seek its own
Recruit subscribers.

For the third time in a row, Radio 105
won the Swiss Dance Music Award this year. To mark the occasion, 105
is adding another house show to its program. From September 2, DJ
Andrew in the program "In da House" every weekend - Fridays from
8 to 9 p.m. and on Saturdays from 11 p.m. to midnight. DJ
Andrew regularly plays in Swiss clubs such as Q Club, Aqua,
Pravda or Supermarket and occasionally in international clubs like
Space in Ibiza, Pacha in Mallorca or Fabrique in Moscow.

Moving chairs at Tamedia: Rolf Bollmann
takes over as publishing director of the Tages-Anzeiger. By the beginning of
In February, he will replace Maili Wolf, who is leaving the publishing house. His
Experience in the regional newspaper market as former publishing director of the
Badener Tagblatt and the Aargauer Zeitung predestined Rolf Bollmann
According to Tamedia, the strategy adopted by the Tages-Anzeiger as a
"Regionally anchored daily newspaper with national significance" more
to push forward. 20 minutes after the change as
Board of Directors retained. Bollmann's successor as Managing Director of
20 Minuten will be Marcel Kohler, who, after a career spanning almost 20 years
at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung to Tamedia. From 1986 Kohler was
in advertising sales at the NZZ. Since the beginning of the year, he has been Director of
new Publicitas branch NZZ Media. Even before the change of boss at
Tages-Anzeiger, Tamedia is restructuring its management. Group CEO
Martin Kall takes over the division from Jürg Brauchli at the beginning of September.
Newspapers. In future, Brauchli will head the newly created
Printing & Logistics division. This combines the
Bubenberg printing center, the publishing logistics and the
sales organization Zuvo, which was already operating under Brauchli's
responsibility.

The WWF wants children
sensitize people to the environment and has
Saatchi & Saatchi commissioned Simko with a campaign. The Geneva-based agency won the pitch against two
competitors.
The campaign is intended to
Children aged 6 to 14 as members of the Panda Club
of the WWF. Advertisements and competitions will be used first.
In a second step, the awareness-raising campaign is to be carried out together with various
partners will be continued.

Online and mobile media consultant Web2com expands sales. Beginning of August
Pasquale Li Voti has joined the team as Account Manager. In his new role, he will focus on
exclusively of customer acquisition and support in
all areas of online marketing.
Li Voti comes from the advertising industry and has worked for agencies as well as clients.
professional experience, writes Web2com in a statement. Most recently he was responsible for
the youth marketing of the St. Galler Kantonalbank.

The Goldbach Media subsidiary ActiveMobile
has decided to work with Matter & Partner. The
advertising agency was awarded the mandate after having already
Project tasks solved for the young mobile marketing company
had. According to Matter &
partner also developed the creative presentation for a campaign with which
ActiveMobile plans to launch a new product next year.