Basler Zeitung to Tamedia - Blocher pushes into French-speaking Switzerland

With the deal, Tamedia achieves its old goal of gaining a foothold in Basel. What this means for BaZ and its staff, after Tamedia had just formed joint jacket editorial offices for its other papers, Tamedia Chairman of the Board Pietro Supino did not want to say to the media in Basel on Monday: The "structures will now be reconsidered".

The initial situation in the media industry is very difficult, he said, and with united forces there are better chances. The merger would strengthen quality and independence, Supino continued. However, local roots remain the "core" of BaZ - and quality has to be prioritized over diversity when resources are scarce.

Supino spoke of "great opportunities" in the digitization of the media landscape that must be exploited. Serge Reymond, Head of Paid Media at Tamedia, held out the prospect of better tools for journalists for faster and better research. However, he said, you have to be faster than your competitors - not publishers, but IT giants.

BaZ profitable

For his part, Blocher defended himself against the reading that the BaZ sale to Tamedia was an admission of his failure in Basel with a hard right-wing course that had contributed to a loss of subscribers. Readership would fall, but would not look worse than at other Swiss newspapers. And after deep red figures when he joined in 2012, 36.5 million francs in sales and 5 million in profits are currently budgeted, he said.

On its own, however, BaZ has no chance in the medium term, Blocher said. Covering all departments itself would be too expensive. The decline in readership would continue in print. After broad discussions, the Tamedia deal was "the best solution. BaZ already cooperates with Tamedia online, for advertisements and with the Magazine; Tamedia also prints the BaZ.

If Blocher had sold BaZ to the AZ Group, which in Basel, with its sister papers BZ Basel and Basellandschaftliche Newspaper samt AZ coat is active, there would have been "a press monopoly". The small Basel DailyWeek he dismissed as a free paper that would probably soon disappear without patronage manna.

Blocher's focus local

The papers traded in for BaZ, together with the 24 local weeklies bought from Zehnder AG, fit into his newspaper company's strategy of focusing "on the local, the village," Blocher said. With many small advertisers, these are more broadly based than the BaZ with its advertising "lump risk" - with which he alluded to large distributor pages.

From Tagblatt of the City of Zurich he gets Tamedia's 65 percent stake; he also takes over the remaining 35 percent of Lokalinfo AG Zürich. Asked about a change of course, Blocher denied such plans. But the Tagblatt is private, he said, and the city of Zurich only pays for the dissemination of information. This contract runs until 2022, after which the city will probably go completely online.

In addition to the Tagblatt, Tamedia submits its two free newspapers Furttaler and Rümlanger to Blocher. And in French-speaking Switzerland, the two largest local newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland are going, Lausanne Cités and GHIGeneva, to its Zeitungshaus AG, in each case 50 percent for the time being. According to the company, it will thus publish a total of more than 1.3 million free newspaper copies.

Somedia suspended

Asked about his plans in French-speaking Switzerland, Blocher talked down the political potential: With two local papers, he would not be able to direct Western Switzerland. He does not want to exert any direct influence on the editorial teams, as he has done so far at BaZ. He would hire "good people" - "certainly not a left-wing revolutionary.

The loser in the sale of BaZ to Tamedia is Somedia, the media company in eastern Switzerland owned by former Publishers Association President Hanspeter Lebrument, which owns the daily papers Südostschweiz and Bündner Tagblatt publishes. For a year now, Somedia in Chur has been taking over proofreading and layout for BaZ; a mooted jacket cooperation is thus off the table.

The Tamedia-BaZ deal still needs the blessing of the Competition Commission. Incidentally, Blocher has now rejected an earlier rumored project for a national free Sunday newspaper.

Concentration

The 1977 merger of the left-liberal National Newspaper with the bourgeois-conservative Basel News BaZ still has 99,000 readers today (Mach study), with a circulation of 46,353 copies (WEMF, with Replica). The weekly Tagblatt of the City of Zurich is 126,594 copies; as the city's official gazette, it is distributed to most households.

Since the beginning of 2018, Tamedia has been operating two supra-regional editorial offices that provide the mantle for numerous daily newspapers. From Zurich, Swiss-German titles such as the Tages-Anzeiger, the Bernese Confederation or the Berner Zeitung BZ served - and soon also the BaZ. In Lausanne, the shell for Tribune de Genève, 24 heures and Le Matin. (SDA)