At first glance, Switzerland’s media landscape is diverse with several public and private television channels and radio stations as well as many newspapers (daily, tabloid and weekly), presenting news in a large variety of formats. Swiss publishing houses provide all major categories of media publications, including full-featured daily newspapers, regional and local weekly editions as well as free-sheets.
Switzerland’s public service broadcaster SRG SSR, with its radio and TV channels, delivers news throughout the day. In addition, SF info frequently repeats the German-language television news and information programmes. Besides regular news programmes (noon, prime time and midnight), the public broadcaster also allocates time and space for other news formats, like magazines, debates, interviews, etc.
Regarding radio, SRG SSR transmits along with regular news several times a day the programme Echo der Zeit, which includes background information and analyses on current topics. In addition, a high number of private, non-commercial radio stations broadcast mainly local and regional news programmes. The formation of private commercial national broadcast television channels is impeded by the relatively small and highly competitive market. During the 1990s, the political pressure to deregulate the broadcast media increased, opening some new business opportunities to private broadcasters. Today, there are only a few regional privately owned news channels (e.g. Tele züri, Tele M1), mostly with only a limited number of news formats. Finally, many news-related online media have entered the Swiss news market. In addition, online editions of most Swiss newspapers are available and most of the public and private broadcasters disseminate their content online. Online news coverage, thus, happens in various formats: news articles can be read on websites, live radio streams can be listened, and television programmes can be watched online – or downloaded as podcasts.
At second glance – and in comparison with the situation about ten years ago – we can state that the diversity of news format and news content has decreased significantly. The traditional quality press has come under heavy pressure. Together with the public radio and – with some distance – public TV, the traditional newspapers provide the public with all relevant information required for a democracy. They still try to sustain their public service in politics, economy and culture. They have a hard time competing against the solely commercially aligned free sheets, tabloids, commercial radio, TV channels and online-media, which all focus on individual interest and on sports, human interest and showbiz. Furthermore, they very successfully reprocess issues from politics, economy and culture in a personal and emotional way (foeg 2010). The abolishment of the traditional news sectors leads to a “all-round journalism” that very often neglects quality criteria. The core sectors such as politics, economy, etc., lose importance in favour of human interest topics.
Altogether we can state that the diversity on the level of different products as well as on the level of different forms of news presentation is sufficient (see also Kradolfer 2010: 94). The latter shows a clear tendency towards tabloidization.
