In 2008, Swiss households spent 393 Swiss francs on average to cover their need for information and communication (Kradolfer 2010: 73). This makes 7.4 per cent of the overall consumption expenditure. Households with a low income spend proportionally more for communication and information in comparison with households with higher incomes.
An annual subscription to a daily newspaper is about 400 CHF (www.presseabo. ch). The Swiss billing company Billag collects license fees for public service radio and television, which amounts to 462 CHF per year per household (combined fee). The monthly subscription fee for cable television costs between 20 and 27 CHF, depending on the provider. Also depending on the provider as well as on the capacity, the monthly costs for access to broadband Internet are between 34 and 50 CHF. According to this, a full supply including radio, television, Internet, daily newspapers and cable-TV costs approximately 150 CHF per month.
Altogether 15.7 billion CHF were spent on communication and information in 2008, thereof 6.6 billion CHF (42 %) for mass communication (radio, TV, print media, books and audio-visual data media). One third goes to telephony and another 16 per cent to computer (hardware and software) and Internet access. In the past ten years, the cost for telephony, Internet and computing have clearly increased, while the costs for traditional mass media have increased indiscernibly. An even closer look reveals that the spending on newspapers and magazines decreased during that time span by about 10 per cent. At the same time, people spent more money on electronic media, especially TV-sets (Kradolfer 2010: 91). In other words – and relevant in the context of democracy – there is a shift from spending money on journalistic content to spending money on technologies and technical devices.
