Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - RSR radio and TSR television will be reborn as RTS, Radio Télévision Suisse in January, when the regional media will merge. The two are part of the SSR group, Switzerland’s public media company. The merger was announced Wednesday 25 November to staff at the two stations in Lausanne and Geneva.

A savings of CHF6 million for a total budget of CHF392m is expected, with the money to be put into programming. The merger will also result in 30 jobs lost out of 1,600 (fulltime equivalent: 2,000 actual jobs), but over a period of five years.

Gérard Tschopp, now head of RSR in Lausanne, will head for Bern to work under Armin Walpen, the CEO of SSR, and Gilles Marchand, currently head of TSR, will manage the new entity.

The merger has caused some political concern, with fears over less regional news coverage or too little diversity in reporting, but SSR argues that the new group will be better able to provide news coverage with some pooling of resources. RTS news will be under one management, which will oversee two separate news teams: Tv-multimedia and radio-multimedia. The offices in Geneva (now TV) and Lausanne (now radio) will remain, but some 10 percent of support and infrastructure costs will be cut in 2010. Radio, television and multimedia will gradually share programming from 2010 to 2014.

Links to other sites: Le Temps (Fre), RSR (Fre)

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