Edipresse staff protest in Lausanne

Lausanne, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) - Some 150 staff from various Edipresse publications as well as other parts of the company, such as printers, on Monday took to the street in front of the publishing company's offices near the Lausanne train station to protest job cuts. The company, faced with a loss of advertising revenue of CHF10 million for the first six months of 2008, announced last week that 50 jobs will disappear and it warned that more cuts could follow.

Ringier restructures, Pillard returns to Lausanne

Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Ringier, Switzerland's largest publisher, has completed a restructuring that puts greater emphasis on online and digital activities, with Marc Walder taking over the leadership of the company in Zurich.

Daniel Pillard

Daniel Pillard, interim head of the company for a year, returns to his post as director of Ringier for French-speaking Switzerland, a job he held for several years before being posted temporarily to Zurich. Ringier Group in 2007 had profits of CHF103 million and turnover of CHF146 billion, with its Swiss business accounting for the largest part of its profitability. It publishes more than 120 magazines and newspapers, including l'Hebdo, the French language news magazine.

Swiss media group begins layoffs, hit by ads crunch

Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Edipresse, the largest publisher in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, announced Wednesday that it is laying off 25 people, mainly in its editorial departments, and eliminating another 25 jobs through early retirement and not filling jobs left vacant. The media group's announcement was met with angry reactions from the journalists' internal representatives group which is holding a general assembly at noon Thursday to discuss the situation, and the media union Comedia, reports TSR. It comes on the heels of a warning from the company's media director, Théo Bouchat, earlier this week that belt-tightening would be necessary given a sharp drop in advertising revenue in the first seven months of 2008, with an estimate of a CHF10 million fall for the year. Bouchat says the company must reduce its costs by about 6% overall, to the tune of CHF10-20 million by the end of 2010. The job cuts announced Wednesday are likely to be followed by others.

Job cuts have hit the various publications of 24 Heures hardest, with nine jobs lost and two at the Tribune de Geneve web site, one at Matin Bleu and others at the TV magazine. Nineteen people are taking early retirement. 24 Heures has already lost several jobs, including 8.5 in November 2007. Among complaints by Comedia about the company's focus on profits to the detriment of staff: Edipresse has continued to create new posts, particularly for its online business. This includes journalists hired for its English site, Swisster.

Edipresse news group could face job cuts

Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Edipresse, Switzerland's second largest publishing group after Ringier, and the largest in French-speaking Switzerland, is facing possible job cuts and a leaner future. Its director of publications, Théo Bouchat, told TSR's Toutes Taxes Comprises television programme that with advertising revenue falling by CHF10 million in the first seven months of 2008 and no real improvement in sight, the company will have to consider all options, including job cuts. For some time it has been working with an "anticipation programme" to review the best way forward in a difficult market and cuts throughout the organization cannot be excluded, says Bouchat.

PubliGroupe announced Monday that profits had fallen by 24.8% during the first six months of 2008, to CHF43.9 million, although turnover was up 3.1% compared to the same period of the previous year. PubliGroupe owns nearly 20% of the share capital of Edipresse and serves as the advertising arm of publishing company. It has suffered from a sharp drop in the Swiss market, 23% in June alone despite Euro 2008, and more than 7% for the year. The only area to see growth has been Internet advertising, in double digits, but the base, or starting point, is so small that its contribution to sales has not been significant.

Edipresse/PubliGroupe relationship

Edipresse adds another newspaper to chain

Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Edipresse is investing in Le Régional, buying a majority of the capital in the local free paper that covers the Lausanne to Montreux area. The newspaper currently prints 98,000 copies and will extend the print run to 115,000 and extend distribution further east to cover the Chablais area. According to 24 Heures, the new ownership will allow Le Régional to add three new jobs, advertising and editorial.

Edipresse owns the major newspapers in the Lake Geneva area with the exception of Le Temps, where is shares equal ownership with Ringier, Switzerland's largest publisher. In early 2008 it created a commercial English-language online site aimed at multinationals, Swisster.

Bejart dancers tell 24 Heures they never wanted media attention

Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The curious saga of a falling-out at the Béjart Ballet continues, with three dancers who have handed in their resignations effective 31 July telling Lausanne newspaper 24 Heures that they would like to know who alerted media because they never intended to have their story go outside the company. The dancers' resignation is part of internal management problems that have arisen under the direction of Gil Roman, who succeeded founder Maurice Béjart after his death in December 2007.

Ed. note: the 24 Heures article mentions that the conflict has prompted media stories worldwide, but there is little evidence the story has provoked much interest beyond Lausanne.

Background story, 11 July, GenevaLunch

Swiss army chief given month to prove he's trustworthy

Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - In a dramatic turnaround prompted by media reports, Samuel Schmid, federal councilor with responsibility for the armed forces, told journalists Monday afternoon that he placed too much confidence in Roland Nef, head of the army.

Nef, who has been under fire in the past week from investigative journalists about his behaviour in relation to his former companion, has been put on leave until 20 August and asked to provide proof that the Council's confidence in him is well placed. Schmid says that if he does not, the top soldier will be fired.

The source of the recent brouhaha is a sexual harassment complaint allegedly filed with the police by Nef's former companion, still on the books when he was approved for his post. He and the woman last week insisted that the details of their split are private but a Swiss-German paper reportedly obtained access to a police complaint lodged against Nef by the woman.

Political reaction in Switzerland was along party lines, with the leftist Greens and Socialists demanding that Nef be fired, while the right-wing UDC called for calm and the centre-right PDC insisted that the Council's move was the right one, but that the Council should call an emergency session rather than waiting until 20 August, reports TSR (Fre). Swissinfo notes that the security committees of the two houses of Parliament will hold a joint session 25 July "to discuss calls for the resignation of Schmid and Nef."

Media reports in French-speaking Switzerland were limited to the same explanatory text prepared by ATS, the Swiss wire service, published by most media without a word changed (text in Le Temps, Fre). Nef had announced earlier he is suing the publisher of a tabloid and according to Swissinfo his lawyer today filed charges against justice officials for not observing secrecy rules in the case of the complaint filed against Nef.

Swiss army boss chase by media continues

Bern and Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Roland Nef, named to head the Swiss Army in 2007, continues to be the target of media attacks, along with Samuel Schmid, the federal councillor who publicly reconfirmed his support of Nef 14 July. Nef's private life, in particular the nature of complaints against him by his former companion, have been the focus of journalists at two major Swiss publications in particular, the magazine Blick and newspaper SonntagsZeitung. According to 20 Minutes, the latest accusations involve Nef answering sex classified ads in the woman's name. Nef's lawyers said Sunday, repots 20 Minutes, that he would not be responding to the newspaper's story. But RSR reports Monday morning that pressure on Nef is mounting, with some politicians now calling for his ouster. The Swiss public radio station quotes Swiss President Pascal Couchepin as saying that he supports Nef professionally but that his personal credibility should be investigated.

Digital private radio stations see deadline extended

Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The deadline for private radio stations to apply for the eight licenses for digital radio (DAB) in French-speaking Switzerland has been moved from 31 July 2008 to 30 September. The extension was made at the request of the private stations' organization to give them more time to complete their applications. Digital radio in the Lake Geneva region is currently served only by SSR, public broadcasting, with RSR in French and WRS in English. WRS also broadcasts on FM, with a Geneva area license, which is how it is picked up by anyone in the region who does not have a special DAB receiver.

SSR has been working in a consortium with private stations to develop digital radio in the area. While digital quality is better than FM radio, listeners must have DAB radios to pick up digital stations and the lack of a wider offer has dampened DAB receiver sales, Gerard Tschopp, head of RSR, told GenevaLunch shortly before commercial WRG radio became public station WRS in November 2007.

FEATURE - Intense commercial love affair with English speakers in Lake Geneva area

Updated 12 July, photos added

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Edipresse, which owns most of the major newspapers in the Lake Geneva region and has a part in some of the radio stations, said Thursday evening at a conference in Geneva that it will soon be giving public radio WRS radio listeners in the region "another choice" when it begins broadcasting regularly on Radio Cité. The content will come from Swisster, the online English site that the media group created in March and which replaced the English Corner, a few web paragraphs in English, produced for years by the Tribune de Geneve. Swisster carries news items and information for expatriates.

Photo, top, by Catherine Nelson-Pollard: visitors to the 2007 Leman Expat Fair: English-speakers in the region are perceived as a new market by many Swiss companies. Expat Expo in Geneva also has a large number of companies lined up to sell their services and products to this population.

The announcement was made during a sales pitch about Swisster by Patrick Aebischer, president of EPFL, and Edipresse executives, to a group of regional business people at Procter & Gamble in Geneva.

EPFL's students, 40% of whom are international, and the polytechnic institute's international faculty and visiting researchers, are an increasingly popular target market for many English-language businesses, social networks and web sites in the region.

Radio Cité is a non-profit station in Geneva that has had financial difficulties for several years. It recently found an additional CHF1-2 million a year through Viviane de Witt's Foundation des Chênes, created in 2006, and it has now applied for a Geneva FM radio concession, or license, that will be awarded in autumn by Ofcom, the federal communications office. It is one of two stations applying for the license: the other is Radio Meyrin.

Radio Cité's application, with the detailed descriptions required by Ofcom of what it offers listeners, makes no mention of English. Edipresse, in announcing Thursday evening its new radio role, provided no details of the financial arrangement.

Photo: the news team at WRS in Geneva, December 2007

When WRG evolved into WRS, or World Radio Switzerland, a public station, in November 2007, it left no commercial radio in English in the area. WRS has a national vocation, with federal funding through SSR, Swiss Public. It is broadcast nationally only on DAB, which requires a DAB radio and at this level the station still has a limited following. It is picked up in much of the Lake Geneva region on FM radio, which is how listeners in the Lake Geneva region listened to WRG, and WRS has maintained that strong link.

Image, courtesy of Ofcom: "Arc lémanique" license area. Click on image to enlarge.

Lac Léman is another group bidding for a radio license, with a mission to broadcast in English. The would-be commercial station is based in Nyon and is applying for an "Arc lémanique" license that extends from just outside Geneva to Neuchatel. It is one of six groups vying for four of these licenses, to be awarded in autumn.

It is owned by Hugh Quennec, Swiss and Canadian financier and owner of the Geneva Servette ice hockey team. The would-be station shows a CHF1.8 million budget for its first year, that will nearly double by the third, in its application documents registered with Ofcam. The second name on the request is that of Isabelle Cornut, to whom WRG outsourced its advertising sales.

While the radio war for English listeners builds, the number of English sites that provide services or information also appears be growing in the region. One of the newcomers is the Geneva Community - which rose from the ashes of WRG, created by a community group that owned 2% of the former commercial radio station. The new non-profit group provides a service to local businesses, allowing members to post events, products and services. 

EPFL's president, Patrick Aebischer, pulled in a crowd for the Thursday evening talk at P&G, on Swiss innovation and the role of multinationals. He noted, in introducing Swisster at the end, that the federal polytechnic institute had "helped finance" the  Edipresse English-language commercial venture. Swisster's business model is bulk corporate subscriptions, with companies offering the product to their employees. He referred to it as the "first Swiss online daily in English."

Ed. note: Aebischer's misunderstanding can only be explained by an oversight on the part of the journalists at Swisster, since Edipresse has worked in the past with GenevaLunch. GenevaLunch, available since 2006, is the first Swiss online daily in English, and it now plays a significant role in the international community as one of the most-visited sites in English in the region.