Swiss press: Media market stable in 2009

The study shows the total income of the Swiss media industry: on the one hand, user expenditure on content, access and hardware for media consumption was surveyed and, on the other, the results of the Swiss advertising statistics were taken into account. According to the survey, a private household spent an average of CHF 2,918 on media consumption in 2009. Compared to previous years, the level was maintained. While expenditure on Internet downloads fell by around 10 percent in 2008, the increase in 2009 amounted to 18 percent and a nominal CHF 235 million. Expenditure on the printed press fell by around 1 percent to CHF 1.7 billion. According to the association, it was not possible to analyze the extent to which there was a shift from the printed to the digital press in this study.
The industry was hit hard by the 15.1% drop in advertising revenue to CHF 2.8 billion. It has not yet been possible to compensate for this with commercial communication on digital platforms: On the one hand, because tariffs there have slumped again at a low level, and on the other because advertising revenue went directly to the providers of search engines and other platforms.

Investing in innovation: Multimedia offerings
Media executives who took part in a survey conducted by the Swiss Press Association on media trends are focusing on the development of digital platforms and the intensification of customer relationships in both the advertising and user markets. The media companies are once again more optimistic about the future. The uncertainty caused by the crisis is increasingly giving way to the self-confidence that every type of technical carrier media is dependent on professional journalistic content, the report continues. The willingness to invest in innovation is high: cost-cutting is no longer the first priority. It is now a matter of positioning traditional media brands with quality content in the digital world.
On the whole, Hanspeter Lebrument, President of the Swiss Press Association, expressed his satisfaction with the state of the industry on Wednesday. Contrary to all forecasts, he said, the industry closed last year better overall than in 2008, although for the first time the press sector had declined somewhat more than in previous years. "We are facing difficult times, but it is wrong to speak of a crisis," emphasized Lebrument. With the exception of free newspapers, not a single title was lost in 2009. Apart from a few changes in ownership, the press landscape has not been this quiet for a long time.