Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - 20 Minutes, recently merged with Matin Bleu, will concentrate its distribution channels on cities and the Lake Geneva region belt as part of cost-cutting measures. The free newspaper will stop using boxes in outlying areas and reduce the number of them in smaller villages in the region in order to place more of the papers in urban centre, particularly Geneva.
Links to other sites: TSR, 20 Minutes (Fre)
More Swiss media cuts on the way
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Edipresse, the largest media company in French-speaking Switzerland, announced Friday 9 October that it will cut nearly 10 percent of its workforce: 100 jobs, with half in its print units, some 30 journalists’ positions and the rest in production. The company has 1,124 full-time equivalent positions in Switzerland. Half of its approximately 3,000 employees work outside the country. Details about which jobs are affected will follow later. The group will begin consultations next week with staff representatives: Edipresse Romande (French-speaking area) has collective agreements with staff, although it has not had such agreements in German-speaking areas in the country.
The latest round of job cuts is due largely to a 25 percent drop in advertising since 2008, with “no improvement in sight”, the company says.
Zurich/Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss newspapers’ print versions are seeing their circulations rise, albeit a slight 0.6 percent. The most recent figures from the Remp survey, done by the Swiss advertising media’s independent research organization, shows that 92.4% of Swiss people over age 14 read a newspaper “more or less regularly,” without defining the frequency. Remp notes that figures for the number of readers has remained “remarkably stable” over the past 10 years.
Le Temps and 24 Heures are the winners for growth in French-speaking Switzerland, among the for-pay newspapers.
Geneva, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) – The number of debts sent for collection increased 13 percent in the first three months of 2009 in Geneva, Olivier Chollet of the Geneva Collections Bureau told 20 Minutes. People are under more pressure to keep up with their bills, the newspaper quotes Pierre-François Unger, the canton’s Economy and Health Department minister, as saying.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Tamedia, which is scheduled to buy out the Swiss business of Edipresse if the competition commission approves the deal, has published less than rosy results for 2008: a 30 percent fall in profits, to CHF105.8 million. The company’s sales rose 21 percent to CHF895.7m, but this was due mainly to absorbing Bern-based Espace Media Group.
