De Weck: Online is gaining in importance
In his opening speech at this year's Communication Summit, SRG Director General Roger de Weck explained why online is becoming increasingly important for the public service.
According to de Weck, the reach of television has decreased significantly in recent years, and viewers are increasingly accessing programs via the Internet rather than via TV channels. Young people in particular need to be attracted to the formats via attractive websites or social forums. The merging of image, sound and text on the Internet also makes it impossible to divide the SRG and publishers into image/sound and text.
The globalization of the media world - in terms of content, distribution and the advertising market - is changing the situation between publishers and SRG. Advertising dollars are increasingly flowing abroad via the advertising windows of foreign channels. The growing importance of the Internet advertising market, in which the share of foreign competition is even higher, is further reinforcing this trend - and thus the financial substrate of Swiss journalism is becoming increasingly scarce. A rethink is needed, de Weck demanded. "We still talk about Switzerland as a media center in categories, as if the globalization of this media center did not exist. As if we were under a cheese cover. As if there were a zero-sum game between SRG and private media under this cheese bell." He added that this no longer had anything to do with the reality, in which Facebook and Google had a 60 to 70 percent share of the advertising market of the future. (imp)
To the article about the Communication Summit.
