SRG researcher Matthias Steinmann launches Radiocontrol and has material for more crime thrillers "Researching and writing crime thrillers go hand in hand"
His versatility is legendary: Matthias Steinmann is not only head of the SRG research service, but also a university professor and pilot. With his latest development, Radiocontrol, he seems to have achieved what Telecontrol failed to do: worldwide marketing. But the actual vision goes even further. Steinmann wants to establish Radiocontrol as a multimedia and intermedia research tool.
This year, you have brought two particularly attention-grabbing books onto the market: Radiocontrol and a crime novel that deals with fraud and murder in the media scene. Will you soon be sitting in your castle writing crime novels?
Matthias Steinmann: No, it will hardly ever get that far. Research is a passion that belongs to me. I am convinced that if you lose your curiosity, you lose a significant part of your vital energy. This is also how I see my writing activities. After all, writing a crime novel is nothing other than researching an environment, a social situation and creating a fictional version of it. Research has many faces.
But Radiocontrol is built, Telecontrol has been for a long time. The big tension is gone.
Steinmann: No, not at all. Radiocontrol will keep me busy for years to come. What we are doing with it now at the start is just the beginning. This system has great potential that goes far beyond measuring radio audience. And Telecontrol is also far from finished: The rapid technological development of TV and video equipment and transmission technologies means that new, even more sophisticated versions are constantly being developed.
How many countries besides Switzerland are interested in Radiocontrol?
Steinmann: We are currently in talks with around two dozen countries. Several of them are about to conduct tests. France and the Netherlands, for example. In Germany, we have a test contract with GfK for various European countries. We have a contract with Norway and are conducting test negotiations for the UK. There are inquiries from the USA, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, the Gulf States and Greece. An option agreement has just been signed for Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It's amazing: everyone wants to carry out tests for the time being. Radiocontrol is a real paradigm shift. Naturally, this is arousing great interest, but there is also some uncertainty about how the changes will turn out.
So Radiocontrol will also be a complete commercial success for you?
Steinmann: Nobody is earning anything from Radiocontrol at the moment. The system is the result of ten years of development work and an investment of around seven million francs. The Telecontrol Group will only start earning money once around 20,000 devices have been sold. So far we've only sold around 2700, so the goal of earning money is still two or three years away.
The demand for Radiocontrol is much greater than for Telecontrol. You were only able to sell the latter in Europe and South America. Why doesn't Telecontrol get beyond these countries?
Steinmann: The markets in North America and Asia are occupied by other large market research institutes. TV research comprises the largest research contracts there are in market research. Accordingly, this very lucrative market is highly competitive. When I started in the sixties and eighties, there were only two large research institutes conducting TV research and dividing the markets between them.
How did you nevertheless get into these, as you say, closed markets?
Steinmann: In Europe, I managed to win over large market research institutes for us. Institutes that were looking for an alternative to compete with the big international players who, until the launch of Telecontrol, were the only ones with the relevant TV research technologies. My marketing consisted of making the Telecontrol system, which I had just developed for SRG in the mid-1980s, available to these European institutes. This strategy enabled us to become the market leader in Europe as a technology supplier in the field of TV research. Against large international companies, a small miracle for me.
But you still haven't gotten beyond Europe and South America. North America and Asia are huge and financially attractive markets. Why didn't you get a foothold there?
Steinmann: You can't conquer these countries with technology and software alone. That would also require enormous financial strength. But we are a comparatively small company. Last year, we made CHF 18 million in sales, plus some license income. In addition, there are now no longer three, but five or six major providers of TV research worldwide. This naturally limits the market for each individual company.
The links between the SRG research service and your own companies seem extremely complicated and are a constant source of rumors. Who actually earns money from Radio- and Telecontrol, who owns what?
Steinmann: It's not really a simple matter that can be explained in two sentences. But everything is clearly and neatly regulated between the groups involved and set out in a comprehensive contract. A distinction must be made between Telecontrol and Radiocontrol. In the case of Telecontrol, whose development was co-financed by SRG from the outset, all naming and patent rights belong to SRG. In return, it receives five percent of the foreign revenue from the hardware license and one third from the software license revenue. Incidentally, the ownership structure was investigated by a commission two years ago. It came to the conclusion that Telecontrol was worthwhile for SRG. Also because the Swiss system is significantly cheaper than comparable foreign systems.
With Radiocontrol, on the other hand, are you the main beneficiary?
Steinmann: Radiocontrol involves ten years of development work, so of course you couldn't expect SRG to finance it. We have arranged it so that SRG receives the name license and part of the software license from Radiocontrol. On the other hand, the patents belong to the Telecontrol Group, which financed the seven million francs in development costs - and also paid the 13 companies and five university institutes involved in the development.
What is the ownership structure of the Telecontrol Group?
Steinmann: The Telecontrol Group is currently 51% owned by Eiphos AG, which I control, and 49% by the German market research company IH/GfK. There are three different areas of my activities: The first is Switzerland. Here I am head of the SRG research service and represent the interests of SRG alone. For example, I stepped aside from the new service contract with Liechti AG, which manufactures the hardware components. The second area of activity is Europe, my actual home hunting market. Here I personally look after the individual countries. The third area comprises the USA, Asia and the rest of the world. Here I have alliances with partners who take care of the marketing of our measuring systems.
What is your vision with Radiocontrol?
Steinmann: First of all, Radiocontrol now has marketing in the radio sector ahead of it. And, as already mentioned, worldwide. Secondly, Radiocontrol can be used to measure TV programs, where Telecontrol can be supplemented. In Switzerland, we not only record 128 radio stations with Radiocontrol, but also 59 TV stations. The result is striking: Radiocontrol delivers exactly the same values as Telecontrol. For example, it is suitable for measuring TV stations whose audiences are so small that they cannot be recorded even with a Telecontrol panel, however large it may be.
What prospects does Radiocontrol have for out-of-home use?
Steinmann: Radiocontrol is an ideal measurement system for any form of out-of-home use, such as for terrestrial digital television. Its rapid introduction is a done deal in Germany and France, and I am convinced that it will also come to Switzerland quickly and very soon. And we are well prepared for this. We already have a radio control panel in our country with 22,000 people who wear the watch twice a year for a week. However, my big vision is to establish Radiocontrol as a multimedia and intermedia survey tool.
Can you be more specific about this vision?
Steinmann: The Radiocontrol watch can not only compress and digitize radio and TV programmes and ambient sounds, but also certain texts spoken by the wearer, for example print titles. Thanks to this feature, the watch could also be used for print research. Like this: When the watch wearer reads a newspaper or magazine, he or she briefly speaks the title of the corresponding page into the watch. This means that the same device can be used to record print, radio and TV. But there's more: the Radiocontrol watch can also be used as a media supplement in any consumer panel.
Do you want to set up a print panel to compete with Wemf?
Steinmann: Certainly not. As far as multimedia use is concerned, I don't have Switzerland in my sights at the moment. I'm thinking "globally" here too. The main thing is to make Radiocontrol more attractive in terms of costs, because the new system doubles the cost of radio research. The radio markets alone are not sufficient to fully exploit such a system. Anyone introducing Radiocontrol must also ask themselves how they can additionally market the system.
Radio and telecontrol are both characterized by high measurement accuracy. Nevertheless, the accuracy of measurement in another area of research in which you are also involved is also called into question: The SRG research service collects the data for the MMXI Internet panel. However, the two virtually identical internet panels from MMXI and ACNielsen produced very different results for April: ACNielsen showed half an hour more usage time than MMXI, but the latter found 600,000 more active Internet users. These are dramatic differences.
Steinmann: Yes, that's the case.
But that is bad for the image of market research. How can it get out of it?
Steinmann: I can only speak for us. We spared neither expense nor effort in testing the measurement method. We conducted a baseline study with 43,000 interviews on the representativeness of our panel. Nowhere else in the world is the MMXI data as well controlled as in Switzerland. We work at a very high scientific level and have all our instruments checked by the Media Science Control Commission. This also applies to the MMXI. But if someone finds that our method has a flaw, I will be the first to intervene. That goes without saying. We want proper research, that is always the main goal.
When will the next generation of Telecontrol be launched on the Swiss market?
Steinmann: Telecontrol VIII should be ready for the market in about a year. It is geared towards future developments such as digital television and digital recording options, which will require the metering devices to be adapted. In future, we will differentiate between two types of households: the "high-sophisticated households", which will make full use of digital technology, and the "low-sophisticated households", which will make less use of the new possibilities. These two different types of household do not need the same telecontrol device.
Does this mean that we will have a two-tier system for Swiss TV households from next summer?
Steinmann: This has to do with the high costs. The device that can do everything, especially when dealing with digital channels, costs around twice as much as the simpler device. If we were to equip all households with them, the panels would be too expensive.
What is the title of your next crime thriller? Will it be set in the media scene again?
Steinmann: The "Weynzeichen-Recherche" was certainly not my last crime novel. But the next one will probably take place in a different milieu. You have to know an area very well to be able to set a novel in it. In "Weynzeichen-Recherche", the subject is the commercialism of the media, I know that from my own experience. There are a few other areas where I also feel at home: research, aviation and the university. These are obvious milieus for the next crime novel. Interview: Daniel Schifferle
"What we are doing now with Radiocontrol at its launch is just the beginning."
"TV research comprises the largest research assignments there are in market research."
Matthias SteinmannBorn May 27, 1942
Place of residence Ursellen
Marital status Married. Two daughters aged 9 and 17.
Career After graduating from the University of Berne (rer. pol.) in 1967, he worked for five years as deputy managing director at AG für das Werbefernsehen. In between, doctorate on the subject of
"Radio advertising in Switzerland", habilitation thesis "Mass media and advertising". From 1973 delegate for audience research at SRG. 1983: Founding of Radio ExtraBern AG (50 percent), one year later sale of the share to today's Espace Media Groupe. 1984: Honorary professor of media studies at the University of Bern. 1985: Introduction of the Telecontrol system. 1986: Takeover of Liechti AG (51 percent) and foundation of the Telecontrol Group. 1989: Part-time
Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Institute for Media Studies at the University of Bern. 1993: Foundation of Publica Data AG (100 percent SRG). 2000: Radiocontrol is used as a measurement system and receives the Swiss Technology Award 99. Launch of the Internet research MMXI.
Quality of life "The more content you can create yourself, the less you are determined by others, the better your quality of life will be - provided you are healthy. For me, it doesn't matter how much you do or how many different things you do."
Professional pilot "Of course, the designation only applies to my B/JFR license on turboprops. But there was a time when I also worked as a pilot at weekends. Today, I only fly when I have to go to Berlin for work at my company Modata. Then I fly myself."
