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Guest commentary The fact that Bakom has not denied a false report by the SDA on Swiss TV advertising windows is deeply disturbing, says Christian Gartmann.
Some people will have rubbed their eyes at the report published last week by the SDA in which the Federal Office of Communications (Bakom) castigates advertising window operators almost like outlaws. I, too, was startled. The fact that German broadcasters "often" do not comply with Swiss advertising regulations with their advertising windows is just as complete nonsense as the claim that Bakom finds these violations "worrying". Moreover, the impression created by the report that the Biel authority has so far been unable to do anything about such violations is fundamentally wrong. This is also confirmed to me by Bakom - an agency faux pas - so far, so bad, one might think. Finally, Bakom clarified that the concern did not relate to breaches of the rules (which in fact hardly ever occur), but to the large market share of windows in Switzerland.
And again I rubbed my eyes: Twelve years after the launch of the first advertising window and against my better judgment, our media watchdogs are still acting as if these windows are harming the Swiss television market. Yet the Bakom statisticians must have noticed how quickly the television market has developed since 1993 - thanks to and not despite German participation. Ten years later, this fact was scientifically proven in a study by Prognos.
Internally, there is hardly anyone at Bakom today who seriously doubts the "economic factor of advertising windows". It's just that you can't say that to the outside world. After all, it is the media minister himself who is constantly resisting promising private initiatives in the TV and radio market. In this way, party politics and species protection for the billion-euro fee-paying SRG colossus continue to be pursued at the expense of the advertising market.
It is therefore not surprising that in the current case, Bakom generously refrained from immediately correcting the politically explosive distortion of its own statements mentioned at the beginning. It was foreseeable that this character assassination would end up in the news columns of specialist and mass media via copy/paste journalism.
The timing is also explosive: the Council of States and National Council are poring over a new radio and television law, which was originally intended to create a Swiss television market under the title of "liberalization". In the meantime, however, the SRG's multi-million lobbying is having an effect. Not least because of the spectre of German monsters devouring everything and against all professional opinion, a draft law has emerged that only Armin Walpen is likely to like, as liberalization and European compatibility are as good as banished from the RTVG revision.
However, the law has not yet been passed. Will all good things come to those who wait? I would rub my eyes ...
> Christian Gartmann is Managing Director for Switzerland of the ProSieben-Sat-1 Group.

Publishers The Ringier Group is not planning any takeovers in Germany. Publisher Michael Ringier told Handelsblatt that he would not be making any acquisitions in Germany and that he "would not like to be alone with a property in Germany". With the political magazine Cicero, Ringier is pursuing the strategy of a niche provider, Ringier said: "We are trying to do things that not everyone can do. That is our competitive advantage."

Simone Keller (photo), editor of Werbewoche for many years, moved to Schweizer Touristik at the beginning of February, where she has joined the five-strong editorial team. The trade magazine for the Swiss travel and tourism industry is published by Tourism Trend Media GmbH.
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Jean-Orphée Reuter (pictured) is replacing Roger Knabenhans as publishing director of the TV magazine TV-Star. It is not yet clear when he will take up the new position. Reuter was Head of Publishing at Glückspost until last November and then Head of Sponsoring/Cooperations at Ringier's magazine division.
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Another departure at Radio 24: After program director Peter Brun, presenter Vladi Barrosa has also resigned from his position with immediate effect. He will be replaced by Marc Jäggi, who has been working as a presenter for Radio 24 for around five years.
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Raoul Gerber took on an additional role at the beginning of the year: The Managing Director of the Lausanne branch of IP Multimedia (Switzerland) is now also Deputy Sales Director of the advertising time marketer. He will therefore also be working more frequently at the headquarters in Küsnacht.
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Main shareholder Ursin Mirer is handing over his position as CEO of the publishing company The Guide Company to Christian-André Oustin. In future, as Chairman of the Board of Directors, he will oversee the strategic direction of the company and concentrate on development tasks. Oustin was most recently Marketing Director of Hotelconsult César Ritz Colleges AG.
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From the beginning of March, Tina Biedermann (photo) will present the programs "ZüriNews" and "ZüriInfo" on TeleZüri. She will also continue to work part-time as a video journalist for the station. Biedermann replaces Ivana Imoli, who is moving to the new people program on SF DRS.
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Nadja Reicht joined the Swiss Public Relations Institute (SPRI) at the end of January. She is responsible for overall marketing and is also in charge of organizing the basic courses and special events.

Züriland-Kombi, Kombi 1 and Nordostschweiz advertising combos - what is holding and what is wavering? The latest changes in the shareholder structures of Landbote, Zürichsee-Zeitung (ZSZ), Zürcher Oberländer (ZO) and Zürcher Unterländer (ZU) also affect the three combos in the region. One thing is certain: with NZZ's entry into ZO, ZSZ and ZU, all partners in the Züriland combination are now under the thumb of the old aunt. The continued existence of this combination is therefore as good as secured. However, it remains to be seen what will happen to Kombi 1 (Landbote, Thurgauer Zeitung and Schaffhauser Nachrichten) and Nordostschweiz (NOS, Kombi 1 and Züriland together). Both can be terminated at the end of the year and terminations could be considered for various reasons. The Landbote, for example, which will soon be joined by the Tages-Anzeiger job advertisement, could want to tie itself even more closely to the Tagi. However, Lothar Dostal, Director of Landbote publisher Ziegler Druck und Verlags AG, emphasizes that a termination of Kombi 1 and thus also of NOS "is not up for discussion from our side".
Conversely, punitive action against the Landbote would be conceivable by excluding it from the NOS. "That would be possible, we want to analyze the new situation first," says ZOM Managing Director Peter Edelmann. However, he would certainly not give up the NOS without replacement. It sounds different from Schaffhausen. "Terminating Kombi 1 and NOS is out of the question for us," says Norbert Neininger, editor-in-chief of Schaffhauser Nachrichten. He would also not support a punitive action against the Landbote at present.
Ziegler Druck believes that a punitive action against its own paper is rather unlikely. But they would not be helpless. "In this case, we would have to think about a combination with the Tagi", says Dostal. He is calm, not least because he sees the Winterthurer Landbote as "the mainstay" of both Kombi 1 and NOS.
Either way, the importance of the combos for the individual titles is high: Kombi 1 and NOS together account for around a third of sales for Landbote and Schaffhauser Nachrichten. The Zürcher Oberländer receives a good 30 percent from NOS and Züriland.
Markus Knöpfli

Media policy The SRG Eastern Switzerland finds the current SRG distribution formula for reception fees disproportionate, and Eastern Switzerland is at a blatant disadvantage compared to Ticino and Western Switzerland, the management committee of the regional company has announced. It is therefore high time to address the taboo subject of changing the distribution key.

Banks For the current mortgage promotion of Graubündner Kantonalbank (GKB), the Chur-based advertising agency Clus is making potential new customers a literally clean offer: anyone who finances their own home with GKB will receive CHF 1,000 as a welcome gift for the final cleaning of their old home. With this unconventional idea and the striking implementation on various advertising media, the Graubünden bankers are not only demonstrating their expertise in business, but also in customer concerns.

Media journalism is underestimated, hardly loved and usually underfunded: At its symposium in Lugano, the European Journalism Observatory (EJO) provided good remedies. "When finances shrink, the media departments are rationalized away first," said Hugo Bütler at the start of the two-day EJO* workshop at the University of Lugano, describing the approach of many other publishers. The editor-in-chief of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, on the other hand, is sticking to his weekly media supplement, but is also relying on the other sections to communicate media topics. Even if the readership may be small, media journalism is absolutely necessary in order to keep an eye on media that observe society. In addition, Bütler says, the continuous media coverage of his paper makes a decisive contribution to its credibility. "Press freedom is not only a political issue, but increasingly also an economic one," says the former ombudswoman of the Washington Post, Geneva Overholser. The professor, who now teaches journalism at the University of Missouri, recommends introducing ombudsmen in Europe too, "who are far more than just answering readers' letters".
In the USA, they also publish criticism of their own medium independently and regularly - even without external requests. In addition, their editorial "memos" are an important tool for internal quality control. However, as the example of the New York Times following the Jayson Blair forgery scandal shows, ombudsman offices are often only set up and taken seriously on the other side of the Atlantic when something has gone seriously wrong.
Nevertheless, there is a more open culture of criticism in US media journalism. Constructive complaints against one's own organization - for example by industry icons such as Howard Kurtz from the Washington Post or David Shaw from the Los Angeles Times - are at least occasionally possible there. After all, journalism is a human activity and everyone makes mistakes, says Brent Cunningham, Managing Editor of the Columbia Journalism Review.
In most European countries, media journalism encounters structural difficulties and reservations: "Dogs don't eat dog meat," is how media professor Bettina Kohlhaas from Santiago de Compostela characterizes the inhibitions of Spanish journalists to criticize competitors or even colleagues from their own publishing house. Serious media journalism hardly exists on the Iberian Peninsula. The so-called "media" pages only contain a mix of program PR and people topics - a practice that is also practiced here in Spain by Blick.
The situation in Italy is also not very encouraging: Luca Veronese, responsible for the media page at the business paper Il Sole 24 Ore, notes that media journalism at other Italian newspapers only takes place in the politics section at best. In a country whose head of state is also the owner of the largest media company, critical journalism is in any case a "tricky to impossible thing".
Whether media journalists actually have to fear sanctions from their own media company or are rashly subjecting themselves to self-censorship out of fear for their jobs is, however, controversial. "I got away with it", reported media columnist Bill Hagerty after an unflattering comment about his employer, the British Independent.
In Germany, too, the refuges of journalistic self-thematization are being cut back or at least understaffed. Michael Hanfeld, for example, is the only full-time editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and is responsible for its daily media page. Among other things, he describes the increasing influence of the PR departments of large publishing and TV companies on in-house media journalists as problematic.
On a positive note, German media journalism has seen an increase in corresponding (and appealing!) trade journals, including Cover, Berliner Journalisten and V.i.S.d.P. There is also an exciting development in France, where Pierre Hessler recently launched Médias, the first ever such trade journal.
Profundity and profitabilityJohann Oberauer, publisher of the special interest magazines Medium Magazin, Wirtschaftsjournalist and Der Österreichische Journalist, proves that differentiating the offering can make economic sense. With supplements such as Sportjournalist, he earns good money even with small target groups. Even his website newsroom.de is profitable.
Solid sources as a factual basis are crucial for well-founded, sustainable and profitable media journalism. Such data is provided by Medien Tenor, as its director Roland Schatz showed. The institute analyzes the content of opinion-leading media in several countries on a daily basis.
Martin Hitz, the man behind Medienspiegel**, reported on the weblog boom in this area. According to Rem Rieder, Senior President of the American Journalism Review, many of these private internet platforms that critically observe the media are subjective and hardly investigative. Some, on the other hand, could certainly be considered an innovative form of media journalism. The blog of American Jim Romanesko***, for example, is so professionally organized that Rieder says he has "long been addicted to it".
* www.ejo.ch
** www.medienspiegel.ch
Self-reflection is usually not welcome in publishing houses.
*** www.poynter.org/column
Andrea Höhne

Radio The unsuccessful Music First project has lodged an appeal with the Federal Council against the licensing of DJ Radio as an FM youth station for Zurich. The Leuenberger department is only interested in protecting the SRG and the private local monopolists from serious competition.

Politics If the lawyer-to-be had put his feet up, he would probably break the back of the dull-witted craftsman, who is "only" on the back of the prototypically underprivileged. Or rather lay. Because in Germany, where this advertisement originated (and where the social market economy was invented in the 1950s and has been regularly celebrated ever since), six federal states are already introducing tuition fees for the winter semester, which is entirely in line with the New Social Market Economy initiative, which is widely supported in business, science and politics,
which is responsible for this nationwide sledgehammer campaign. But the new tax should be "socially fair", i.e. graduated according to income. Such a complex issue would, of course, require appropriately differentiated communication. At best, this visual language is suitable for illustrating a new edition of the communist manifesto, but not as an appeal for solidarity in education policy. Not even in Marx's historical homeland.
(oc)

Self-promotion In order to answer all the questions about his whereabouts once and for all, Jean Etienne Aebi advertises on his own behalf, even though he doesn't need it.self-promotion In order to answer all the questions about his whereabouts once and for all, Jean Etienne Aebi advertises on his own behalf, even though he doesn't need it. "But Flo Wacker came along and put this flea in my ear," says the self-employed advertiser, who has been self-employed since June 2004: an online cartoon with lots of nicotine and caffeine that pokes fun at him. What remains unmentioned in the film are the other diverse uses of his head and his experience - from a company's brand CD to second opinions, lectures and readings for associations and universities or jury member at international creative competitions such as the Cresta Awards.

Press The Aargauer Zeitung (AZ) has announced various new features for next fall, with plans to expand the range of cultural, special interest topics and services as well as product and consumer information and make them more visible. The layout of the newspaper will also be refreshed, according to the AZ of February 1. Changes have already been made to the print version: from this issue onwards, the four main editions of the AZ will appear in four colors throughout.