FM frequency Radio 105 lays claim to the Zurich youth radio license. With a study, it proves above all that young people also swim in the mainstream.
In 2002, the Federal Office of Communications identified "unmet radiophonic needs" among young people and therefore invited tenders for a license for a VHF youth station. The submission deadline expired on August 27 (see also page 1) and Radio 105 wanted to get to know the target group better. The Muttenz-based cable station, which had registered its claim to the license from the outset, commissioned IHA-GfK to conduct a survey of 300 Zurich residents between the ages of 15 and 24. The result: "No other station is wanted by the target group on FM as much as Radio 105," the study triumphantly states.
A full 50 percent of 15 to 19-year-olds want to be able to receive 105, compared to 33.3 percent of 20 to 24-year-olds. This is followed by Virus and Radio Swiss Pop among younger people. Older people put the French Couleur 3 in second place, followed by Virus.
However, the statistics say nothing about how much young people actually want one of these stations. The question was which of twelve stations they would like to receive on FM. Eight percent of older respondents and 2.7 percent of younger respondents were unable to choose any of these stations. In view of the fact that some of the stations are only marginally known (see table), it is also obvious that an established brand such as Radio 105 is mentioned more frequently.
In order to refute the accusation that the study only surveyed awareness, Radio 105 also asked about the preferred music format. The 15 to 19-year-olds gave the best marks to "top hits and trendy music such as pop and charts" (the NRJ formula). Older listeners prefer a "good mix of hits, electronic music, black music and rock". This formula, which 105 claims for itself, comes in second place among younger listeners, while the classic Zurich format radio formula "hits from the 80s, 90s and today" is in fourth place for both. Alternative and electronic music are right at the bottom. However, none of the formats received dream marks. On a scale of 1 to 10, the most popular formulas scored just under 7 points. "House, techno, trance, drum'n'bass", which brought up the rear, scored just over 4 points.
For Radio 105, the study proves that its concept is in demand among young people in Zurich. However, the results also and above all show that a majority of young people are not far removed from mass taste.
Stefano Monachesi

Media agencies The French advertising group Publicis is the new sole owner of the media network Zenith Optimedia (ZO).media agencies The French advertising group Publicis is the new sole owner of the media network Zenith Optimedia (ZO). It is taking over the 25 percent of the shares previously held by the British advertising holding company Cordiant and its new owner WPP. Publicis is thus exercising an option and paying the contractually agreed 75 million pounds. WPP will retain nine branches of the ZO network, which were 100 percent owned by Cordiant. Publicis and WPP had fought a bidding duel for Cordiant in July.

Printing industry 52 percent of all companies in the graphic arts industry recorded a decline in earnings in the second half of 2002, with only 4.2 percent of companies reporting higher revenues, said Peter Edelmann, President of the industry association Viscom, at a press conference. Printing suffered the most, with 71 percent of companies reporting a drop in income. Currently, no group of companies is achieving a cash flow of ten percent, which is necessary to cover the industry's high investment requirements, said Edelmann.

Job vacancies in the Swiss daily press fell significantly in July, with the Manpower job index dropping by 1.8 points to 24.1 points. In June, it still showed a slight upward trend (0.2 points), but had fallen by around one point in each of the previous months. Of the 13 sub-regions surveyed, the index only rose in Geneva (by 0.5 points). The summer slump was particularly prevalent in Biel, where the index fell by 6.5 points.

Private radio station Hitradio Z, which disappeared from the airwaves on August 14, now appears in the updated radio planning tool together with lower tariffs and listener figures for the first half of 2003 - as an individual station and as part of the One Pool. Publica Data and IP Multimedia, the exclusive marketer of Energy Zurich, have agreed on this. IP initially wanted to make a radical break with Hitradio Z and launch Energy Zürich without any figures at all (WW 28/03). However, this would have made the One Pool unplannable. (mk)

Print The business newspaper L'Agefi in French-speaking Switzerland is lending a helping hand to advertising agencies in French-speaking Switzerland. Around ten of the most important agencies were invited to present themselves free of charge with full-page advertisements in the daily newspaper. The resulting subjects appear between August 18 and September 5. The prelude made on Monday euro RSCG Balladur & Giger. With the action, L'Agefi wants to give impetus to the advertising market in Western Switzerland. "Especially in difficult periods, you have to invest in advertising to increase your visibility and/or market share," explained L'Agefi marketing director Patrick Zanello.

Advertising clubs Yves Portenier and Olivier Gerard have founded the association Créatifs Romands, which brings together not only ADs and CDs, but also graphic designers, photographers, web, sound and packaging designers. The annual Prix de la Création Romande will be launched in 2004. Créatifs Romands also wants to promote participation in creative competitions.

Youth TV Under the name "Elevator-TV", Dominik Kaiser has submitted a license application for a full regional language channel aimed at young people, who will be able to take part in the programme via the Internet and SMS. Kaiser, co-organizer of the Street Parade and former advertising consultant, gained his TV experience as managing director of the interactive music channel Viva Plus in Germany. However, Elevator TV will not be a clip station, but will offer a mix of news, trend sports, games, travel, music and media art, as reported by the SonntagsZeitung.

News design Readership retention is the tricky part for journalistic websites. Two practitioners show what web designers have come up with - but nothing more.Reading a newspaper means leafing through it. Articles and advertisements vie for attention with headlines and images. On the Internet, however, there is nothing to browse through. Websites have no back pages. If you want to get your news to the people online, you have to try out other ways.Alexander Kranz and Ricarda Stiller present practical solution strategies in "News-Sites. Design and Journalism". In the first part of the (illustrated) book, homepages and follow-up pages of around 60 online news services worldwide are illustrated; in their analysis, the authors evaluate the approaches to Internet-specific problems in news design. They draw on their experience as designers and journalists at Stuttgarter Nachrichten Online.
Design, navigation and content: The authors divide the "tricks of the trade" into these categories with which a news website aims to entice its visitors to stay as long as possible. The most space is given to design issues. These range from the integration of the CD to the creation of effective teaser images and web-specific typography to the choice and dosage of color.
The reader will miss a prior analysis of the actual information structure, which should be the starting point for any navigation and essentially determine its design. Advertising, which is vital for journalistic websites, also receives hardly any attention.
The tendency towards superficiality is not an isolated case. For example, the color chapter refers to the teachings of the Swiss art teacher Johannes Itten without explaining the basics or at least referring to further literature. The result is a kind of snipping book for web designers. How to get users to consult a website beyond the homepage cannot be learned from this oeuvre.
> News sites. Design and Journalism by Alexander Kranz and Ricarda Stiller (with CD-ROM). Springer Verlag, Berlin 2003. 242 pages, Fr. 80.-.
Stefano Monachesi

Carmelo Buffoli wants to raise awareness of the ASW quality label as the new President of the Alliance of Swiss Advertising Agencies. "In five years' time, the industry will be completely different because we will be undergoing a similar structural change as typographers did back then," Carmelo Buffoli is convinced. Back then, the digital revolution almost completely wiped out a profession - when suddenly anyone could set texts on a computer and design their own club magazine in their living room. In advertising, such a structural change will develop in such a way that many ideas will increasingly be part of a design that can also be offered by service providers other than advertising agencies - graphic work directly from a print shop, for example. The strategies of such advertising, on the other hand, should be delivered all the more sustainably by the agencies. For the newly elected President of the ASW, this development is one of the most important challenges for his term of office. He formulates his goal in this situation as follows: "I want to make the ASW quality label better known."
Developing strategies is also what he prefers to do in his own agency. "Too often, you just design quickly from the hip. Without any strategic justification," he says. Yet the most exciting thing about advertising is actually asking: What do we implement and how? What measures are we taking? What can we expect?
Buffoli came to advertising "in the golden eighties" via the School of Arts and Crafts. He initially worked as a graphic designer for clients. In 1991, he founded his own small agency and today employs seven people at Weinbergstrasse in Zurich. External specialists are hired as required and charged directly to the client. "An ideal model, in line with the ASW philosophy," he says, because an agency managed in this way has no underemployed staff. And when things get quieter, a lot of work is done in-house again.
In such cases, the father of the family, Buffoli, may have to stay at the agency for another week while his wife and children have already left for India. He has already spent his 14th vacation there this summer, as his wife comes from Tibet and her relatives now live in India. Since then, the subcontinent has also taken a liking to the Italian-Swiss Buffoli. "But I didn't become a Buddhist," he emphasizes, although he has his children brought up in Buddhism by their mother. He didn't meet his wife on a pilgrimage either, but "quite profanely in a Zurich disco". What he likes most about India is the completely unusual approach to time for an advertiser. The Italian has also come to appreciate the food from the Far East.
This coexistence of different cultures was also one of the reasons why Carmelo Buffoli was hired as an advisor to the National Council's Committee on Foreigners' Affairs. As he is a dual citizen, he was asked to advise on the automatic naturalization of the third generation. Since then, he has occasionally given talks on the subject. The bottom line: Switzerland needs foreigners, and it was created by foreigners. However, this situation requires active integration. "I have to integrate and make an effort to do something from my side too." In other words, a foreigner should not abandon his or her original culture at the border post, but rather contribute it in a meaningful way.
In addition to his Italianità, the advertiser now also finds an everyday connection to culture when playing the cello, "consuming books" and looking at constructive art.
Andreas Panzeri

Radio If SRG were to be limited to 60 percent of FM frequencies in future, it would have to give up one of its five stations in each language region (its own three stations and the first stations in the other language regions). SRG spokesperson Josefa Haas confirmed this consequence to the Mittelland Zeitung. The National Council Committee for Transport and Telecommunications has included a passage in the bill on the new Radio and TV Act that would grant private radio stations 40 percent of the frequencies in future instead of the current 25 percent. If this proposal is passed by Parliament, the SRG would not shut down the affected radios in the individual language regions, but would switch to technologies such as digital DAB.

The new foundation Swiss Aids Care International (Saci) has commissioned Weber Hodel Schmid with a wide range of communication measures, and in an initial phase the agency is concentrating on carrying out PR campaigns and managing the foundation's media office. Saci was founded this spring by Ruedi Lüthy. He is regarded in Switzerland as a proven Aids therapy specialist and was co-founder of the Zurich Lighthouse. The foundation aims to help people with HIV and Aids in the world's poorest countries. Those affected are offered medical care and support that is adapted to local conditions and customs. A first project will soon be launched in Zimbabwe.