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ftm Radio Page - August 23, 2013

Doomed station wins award, again
language, platform matters

At the end of every August, on the Thursday before school starts, radio broadcasters in Switzerland gather in Zürich for the annual RadioDay. There are speeches, presentations and lunch for networking. Private commercial broadcasters plead poverty. Public broadcasters try to appear humble. After the lunch the group reassembles for the Radio of the Year presentation. One award is given to one station, public or private, from the dominant Swiss-German region and another for the rest of the country. It’s all based on year to year audience reach increase by percentage; very objective. This is Switzerland.

So the big winner this year in the non-Swiss-German regions was public channel WRS – World Radio Switzerland – the only English-language channel in Switzerland. Its year to year increase was 130%. No other station was even close. It won Radio of the Year last year, too. At the end of next week, the station will be turned over to a commercial operator because WRS did not fulfill the SSR-SRG objectives, never completely illuminated and audience reach certainly not one of them.

The English language, for many Swiss-German speaking politicians, is just not politically correct. The station, in various iterations, has been offered on FM in the Geneva area, populated with thousands of international civil servants, bankers and traders who interact all day in English, much to the chagrin of many Swiss-German speaking politicians. The WRS predecessor, joint public-private Geneva station WRG (World Radio Switzerland), won Radio of the Year in 2005, just before the SSR-SRG took it completely into its family because they said it couldn’t compete.

The new commercial operators of WRS, AngloMedia, will have a one month reprieve before the station is relegated to DAB, insuring that it will not likely receive next year’s Radio of the Year award. The only DAB channel with significant audience in Switzerland is public Swiss-German folk music channel Musikwelle, once only available on AM/MW. Swiss dairymen, so the story goes, bought DAB receivers because the folk music appealed to the cows.

Winning for the Swiss-German region was Radio 105 for an audience increase of 38%. It has won Radio of the Year in each of the last three years. Owned and operated by the remarkable Giuseppe Scaglione, Radio 105 was denied an FM license until 2009 before which it was a cable station. Platform, it seems, is important. and so is language.

Lots of music on private stations, little bad news
Regional effect

Privately owned radio broadcasting in Switzerland was first authorized 30 years ago, a generation by any measure. There are now 38 private local stations, not including a scattering of non-commercial stations or the ubiquitous channels of public broadcaster SSR-SRG, and media regulator OFCOM has carefully evaluated program content, details released coincident with the annual Swiss RadioDays in Zürich. Private local radio concessions require minimum amounts of public service content; news, public affairs, weather reports and the like.

And most Swiss private local radio stations do their part admirably, according to OFCOM’s study of program content during “prime-time” morning, midday and afternoon hours. Of all stations, the average amount of local news was 25 minutes. Some stations carried considerably more and these were more likely to be stations serving communities outside the main metropolitan cities. The private local stations tend to present news in bulletins, long form reports and live interviews being quite rare. On average 62% of “prime-time” programming is music on Swiss private local stations, the range being from 78% to 46%.

Local politics occupies 26% of news content, on average, but by station the amount ranges from 55% to zero. Softer subjects – education, health, religion and pets – average 21% of news content, the range being from 38% to 8%. Bad news – crime, catastrophes, wars and accidents – account for only 10% of news content on average. A few stations relate more bad news than other subjects and, too, some stations broadcast no bad news.

Advertising, obviously, supports Swiss private local radio, without which there would be no good news or bad. The average amount of advertising during these “prime-time” hours was 6%. The two private stations in the Italian-speaking region – 3iii and Fiume Ticino – broadcast the most advertising, 17% and 12% respectively. (JMH)

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