Different ways of providing information on the national channels

The SRG television stations fulfill their information mandate in different ways, as a study conducted by the University of Fribourg on behalf of the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) shows. According to the study, information programs on Swiss-German television SF are the least frequent. SF 1 and SF zwei devoted just 23 percent of their broadcasting time to these programs, as Joachim Trebbe, head of the study, said on Wednesday at OFCOM's annual media conference in Biel. In contrast, French- and Italian-language channels deal more frequently with relevant information topics. For TSR 1 and 2, the corresponding share is 35%, for RSI 1 and 2 36%.
By information, the researchers involved understand publicly relevant topics such as politics or factual topics as well as privately relevant topics: Programs that depict viewers' lives and human-touch topics. This contrasts with films, shows, games and sports programs.
However, Trebbe also warned against over-interpreting the data. The figures mentioned could only tell us to a limited extent how much importance is attached to the information channels, as repetitions of info programs, for example, distort the figures. But even after subtracting these effects, Swiss German television broadcasts fewer information programs than the other public broadcasters.