Swiss Media Forum 2018: Publishers rehearse closing ranks
Media companies recognize the signs of the times
That was charming and made the audience laugh, but probably wouldn't even have been necessary. The mood on the podium, which this time took place on the congress ship MS Diamant, was also so collegial and constructive. The Swiss media industry has seen better times, especially when it comes to advertising revenues (which are in free fall). Marc Walder estimated that companies like Ringier and Tamedia are losing 80 percent of all online advertising to platforms like Facebook, which now serve as a gateway for most users. To counter this development, he said, deeper cooperation between the leading national players is essential.
Walder even spoke of a "fight for survival" for which a solidarity is needed. The Ringier manager added that the "very first talks" were already being held (at least Gilles Marchand was probably not present at those talks, because he said he was hearing about the idea of cooperation for the first time...). Either way, Marchand, Supino and Graf were open to accepting their colleague Walder's proposal.
Shared login, shared data pool
The cooperation, whose key data is to be formulated by the end of the current year, could include a joint login for (paid) news content. Then, for example, NZZ online users would no longer have to get a separate account for Tamedia titles and vice versa, which would make the user experience more attractive. A shared data pool, into which anonymized user data from all publishers would flow, is also conceivable - as a basis for argumentation with the advertising market.
Marcello Foa as surprise guest
In addition to the "Elephant Round", there was another "highlight" at the Swiss Media Forum: Quite spontaneously, the designated RAI president Marcello Foa showed up as a surprise guest. The Italian-Swiss dual citizen was previously responsible for "Corriere del Ticino" and has now been appointed the most powerful man in Italian state media. A decision that suggests that the current government of Prime Minister Salvini also wants to quickly bring the social democratic RAI on its course. Foa was conciliatory on stage, but the fact that people in Palazzo Chigi are well-disposed toward him is certainly also due to the fact that he has repeatedly expressed right-wing populist views as a blogger in the past. He thinks as little of homosexuality and open family models as he does of Germany's and France's European policy, but he cheered the victories of anti-establishment politicians in various countries.
It was interesting, then, that Marcello Foa was naïve when asked by Susanne Wille: he had always been an apolitical person, but he was also a "free thinker" who didn't let anyone tell him to shut up. He did not want to recognize a right-wing conservative tendency in his statements of the past - that was all a propaganda campaign against him. The accusation that one's own "opponents" are orchestrating an unfair campaign is, by the way, a popular stylistic device among political populists, not only in Italy. And Foa used another such stylistic device when he accused RAI of having tendentiously reported on certain topics up to now (by which, one may assume, he probably meant criticism of the Lega Nord-Cinque Stelle government). As president, he wants to stand up for "truly free" reporting. Only he himself knows what that means. If criticism of the government means "lack of freedom" to him, however, would the equalization of the state media be "freedom" in this twisted logic?
