Roger de Weck, new head of Swiss public broadcasting
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Roger de Weck has been named the new head of SSR, Swiss Public Broadcasting, the group announced Tuesday.
De Weck, 56, succeeds Armin Walpen 1 January 2011, upon Walpen’s retirement. The new director is a well-known journalist in Switzerland but he is particularly well-known in Geneva as the president of the Graduate Institute.
Roger de Weck has a multilingual, multicultural Swiss background that will stand him in good stead as he leads a monopoly organization that has been operating in the red for some time.
He is based in Zurich but works in Geneva, was born on the language divide in Fribourg, grew up in Geneva and Zurich, took an economics degree in Saint Gallen, then studied business and publishing in Hamburg, Germany. He later earned a doctoral degree from the University of Lucern.
He has worked for Edipresse’s Tribune de Genève and 24 heures, as well as the German-language publications Weltwoche and Die Zeit. He was later editor-in-chief of Tages-Anzeiger and a member of the management team at Tamedia, also editor-in-chief at Die Zeit, then worked independently before being named to his position at the Graduate Institute.
SSR press release (Fre)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – SSR, Swiss public broadcasting company, will lose its director general, Armin Walpen, and its deputy director general, Daniel Eckmann, at the start of 2011. Walpen has confirmed that he will retire 31 December 2010 and Eckmann earlier announced that he will leave at the end of January 2011, a month later. SSR will begin the search for its new senior management team at the end of August 2009.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – SSR’s chairman Armin Walpen announced Thursday morning that the company will be freezing jobs in 2009 at the 2008 level and taking other cost-cutting and containment measures. SSR is the parent of Swiss French-speaking radio and television, RSR and TSR, as well as World Radio Switzerland, WRS and swissinfo, a multi-language online Swiss news site.
