Radios on standby
Marketer Will Publicitas succeed in bringing a dozen radios under its wing? Doubts are justified.
Marketer Will Publicitas succeed in bringing a dozen radios under its wing? Doubts are justified.
As reported last week, the One Pool was terminated by three radios on time and "as a precaution" at the end of 2005. The other pools remained quiet. But appearances are deceptive: two radios are also on the move from Pool 2000, but the pool members there have used a trick to make the harmony last longer: On June 30, they decided to postpone the six-month notice period by a few weeks. And at Swiss Radio Pool, whose contract runs until the end of 2006, things only remained quiet because any termination at the end of 2005 - regardless of whether it takes place in June, July or August - would be non-contractual anyway, so there is no hurry.What all the radios willing to leave have in common is that they belong to media houses with which Publicitas has a lease. Specifically, these are the radios Basel 1, BE1, Grischa, 32, Argovia, and apparently also Pilatus, Aktuell and Ri. However, these radios alone do not constitute a pool that would be acceptable to P. According to reports, the P is aiming to cover the centers of Basel, Bern and Zurich with two market players each, which is why it will also try to include 24, Basilisk, Energy Zurich and ExtraBern.
Unstable business
The main question, however, is why all these radio stations - especially those of Tamedia, Goldbach Media and Espace Media - should offer P a hand. What can the P lure them with? Cross-media with print? Hardly. A combination with cinema would be more interesting - a project that has long been in the drawers of PubliGroup subsidiary Cinecom. However, there is no information on this.
However, the standby mode for pool terminations shows how unstable the matter still is, not least because of the many disputants involved among the radios. Time is also pressing: the existing pools want to know where they stand by mid-August, as they want to present their rates on Radioday on August 30.
It is therefore quite possible that P underestimated the differences in the radio scene.
Markus Knöpfli
As reported last week, the One Pool was terminated by three radios on time and "as a precaution" at the end of 2005. The other pools remained quiet. But appearances are deceptive: two radios are also on the move from Pool 2000, but the pool members there have used a trick to make the harmony last longer: On June 30, they decided to postpone the six-month notice period by a few weeks. And at Swiss Radio Pool, whose contract runs until the end of 2006, things only remained quiet because any termination at the end of 2005 - regardless of whether it takes place in June, July or August - would be non-contractual anyway, so there is no hurry.What all the radios willing to leave have in common is that they belong to media houses with which Publicitas has a lease. Specifically, these are the radios Basel 1, BE1, Grischa, 32, Argovia, and apparently also Pilatus, Aktuell and Ri. However, these radios alone do not constitute a pool that would be acceptable to P. According to reports, the P is aiming to cover the centers of Basel, Bern and Zurich with two market players each, which is why it will also try to include 24, Basilisk, Energy Zurich and ExtraBern.
Unstable business
The main question, however, is why all these radio stations - especially those of Tamedia, Goldbach Media and Espace Media - should offer P a hand. What can the P lure them with? Cross-media with print? Hardly. A combination with cinema would be more interesting - a project that has long been in the drawers of PubliGroup subsidiary Cinecom. However, there is no information on this.
However, the standby mode for pool terminations shows how unstable the matter still is, not least because of the many disputants involved among the radios. Time is also pressing: the existing pools want to know where they stand by mid-August, as they want to present their rates on Radioday on August 30.
It is therefore quite possible that P underestimated the differences in the radio scene.
Markus Knöpfli
