Quakes and cannibals
Column For the foreseeable future, Switzerland will remain an experimental laboratory for the media, which is also being closely observed in neighboring countries.
Column For the foreseeable future, Switzerland will remain an experimental laboratory for the media, which is also being closely observed in neighboring countries The Swiss media landscape is in such a state of flux that the publisher of Basler Zeitung, Matthias Hagemann, has diagnosed an "earthquake of magnitude 12": Tamedia took over the Espace Group at the end of May - and with it the two capital city papers Berner Zeitung and Bund. Shortly afterwards, Ringier sold its TV magazines to Springer and Bauer. Prior to the deal, the in-house tabloid Blick mobilized Swiss fears of German foreign infiltration in a veritable campaign - and the merger of Ringier with Springer had presumably already failed at an earlier stage not least because of such concerns.
Recently, another major German media company, Der Spiegel, entered the small but apparently lucrative local print market - albeit only with a supplement about the supposed "world power Switzerland", which probably missed its target group: it gave readers in Hamburg rather than Zurich a "new" view of Switzerland. After all, the timing was favorable: Facts and Cash, the two most direct competitors for the North German invaders, had been discontinued a few days earlier.
In the greater Zurich area, the two local rivals, the publishing houses of Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Tamedia, are also fighting a fierce battle for the last remaining independent local papers, which they are absorbing one by one into their empires or fighting over with their own regional editions.
From an analytical perspective, two overlapping trends can be observed: On the one hand, Switzerland is being hit by an overdue concentration push in which foreign investors are also making their bargains: For example, while the fact that nine daily newspapers continue to be published in Berlin for 3.4 million people is already seen as unique newspaper diversity, dozens of titles are still printed every day for just under 4.8 million German-speaking Swiss.
On the other hand, consumers' willingness to pay for newspapers and magazines is clearly declining. A murderous fight for survival is therefore underway in the overcrowded segment of high-quality print products. Cash and Facts are the first victims, but circulation is also crumbling at other quality papers and many regional newspapers, and part of the advertising business is migrating to the Internet, never to be seen again.
In contrast, the free newspaper 20 Minuten has risen to become the most widely distributed newspaper in the country. It has just distributed 550,000 copies - the record to date. A lot of money is earned in this lowest market segment; in German-speaking Switzerland alone, around 120 million francs are generated in advertising money. This is why imitators have long been at work and further free projects are in the maturing phase. There is a danger that the major publishers will cannibalize their own higher-quality print media. A first example of this could already be the weekly newspaper Cash - although Ringier publishing manager Christoph Bauer, who is responsible for the launch of the free title Cash daily, vehemently denies this.
Only at first glance is it surprising that a country like Switzerland, which also tends to stand for solid high-price products in the media sector, has become a pioneer of free newspapers. The explanation for this is simple: while in Germany a defensive cartel of large publishers blocked free newspapers, Tamedia, the most aggressive player on the Swiss-German market, acquired the first Swiss free newspaper, occupied the market segment itself and expanded it at breathtaking speed.
It looks as if Switzerland will remain an experimental laboratory for the media industry for the foreseeable future, which will also be closely observed in neighboring countries. The next step, as media expert and former Tamedia manager Kurt W. Zimmermann has just recommended, will probably be to earn a lot of money with a free Sunday newspaper. There have already been two of these for a long time: Il Mattino and Il Caffè are published in Italian on the southern side of the Alps. However, the two fruits of the Ticino "lemon market" (see Advertising Week No. 24/2006) are not yet really perceived as successful models north of the main Alpine ridge.
Prof. Dr. Stephan Russ-Mohl heads the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.
Recently, another major German media company, Der Spiegel, entered the small but apparently lucrative local print market - albeit only with a supplement about the supposed "world power Switzerland", which probably missed its target group: it gave readers in Hamburg rather than Zurich a "new" view of Switzerland. After all, the timing was favorable: Facts and Cash, the two most direct competitors for the North German invaders, had been discontinued a few days earlier.
In the greater Zurich area, the two local rivals, the publishing houses of Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Tamedia, are also fighting a fierce battle for the last remaining independent local papers, which they are absorbing one by one into their empires or fighting over with their own regional editions.
From an analytical perspective, two overlapping trends can be observed: On the one hand, Switzerland is being hit by an overdue concentration push in which foreign investors are also making their bargains: For example, while the fact that nine daily newspapers continue to be published in Berlin for 3.4 million people is already seen as unique newspaper diversity, dozens of titles are still printed every day for just under 4.8 million German-speaking Swiss.
On the other hand, consumers' willingness to pay for newspapers and magazines is clearly declining. A murderous fight for survival is therefore underway in the overcrowded segment of high-quality print products. Cash and Facts are the first victims, but circulation is also crumbling at other quality papers and many regional newspapers, and part of the advertising business is migrating to the Internet, never to be seen again.
In contrast, the free newspaper 20 Minuten has risen to become the most widely distributed newspaper in the country. It has just distributed 550,000 copies - the record to date. A lot of money is earned in this lowest market segment; in German-speaking Switzerland alone, around 120 million francs are generated in advertising money. This is why imitators have long been at work and further free projects are in the maturing phase. There is a danger that the major publishers will cannibalize their own higher-quality print media. A first example of this could already be the weekly newspaper Cash - although Ringier publishing manager Christoph Bauer, who is responsible for the launch of the free title Cash daily, vehemently denies this.
Only at first glance is it surprising that a country like Switzerland, which also tends to stand for solid high-price products in the media sector, has become a pioneer of free newspapers. The explanation for this is simple: while in Germany a defensive cartel of large publishers blocked free newspapers, Tamedia, the most aggressive player on the Swiss-German market, acquired the first Swiss free newspaper, occupied the market segment itself and expanded it at breathtaking speed.
It looks as if Switzerland will remain an experimental laboratory for the media industry for the foreseeable future, which will also be closely observed in neighboring countries. The next step, as media expert and former Tamedia manager Kurt W. Zimmermann has just recommended, will probably be to earn a lot of money with a free Sunday newspaper. There have already been two of these for a long time: Il Mattino and Il Caffè are published in Italian on the southern side of the Alps. However, the two fruits of the Ticino "lemon market" (see Advertising Week No. 24/2006) are not yet really perceived as successful models north of the main Alpine ridge.
Prof. Dr. Stephan Russ-Mohl heads the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.
