There is a strong concentration of newspapers at the regional level. The publishing houses have divided the regional markets among themselves. There is hardly any competition. Only in the Italian-speaking part and in the greater Zurich area do several publishing houses compete with each other. The SRG SSR is not legally permitted to promote competition in journalism. The region belongs to the commercial media companies. While politics continues to be organised at the three levels, of the confederation, canton and communes and, more or less successfully evades centralisation by the confederation, a majority of the cantonal capitals no longer have their own local newspaper, let alone several independent journalistic offerings to develop a cantonal perspective. The central editorial offices of the leading regional group newspapers are located in Zurich or in Aarau. The eleven cantons of Aargau, Fribourg, Geneva, Grisons, Jura, Neuchâtel, Schaffhausen, Ticino, Vaud, Valais, and Zurich have a daily newspaper on site, while the remaining 15 (half) cantons of the two Appenzell, the two Basel, Bern, Glarus, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz, Solothurn, St. Gall, Thurgovia, Uri have to be satisfied with a small regional newsroom on site.
Since Switzerland is quadrilingual (German, French, Italian, and Romansh), regional and linguistic markets play prominent roles. The comparatively large number of regional newspaper titles, regional television stations, and radio stations, conceals the fact that most daily newspapers are owned by two to three media houses.
In German-speaking Switzerland, Tamedia TX Group publishes the daily commuter newspaper 20Minuten, which is financed by advertising money and distributed free of charge. This commuter freesheet is by far the newspaper with the highest circulation in Switzerland. Moreover, in the three most populous cantons of Zurich, Bern, and Vaud, its regional newspapers Tages-Anzeiger, Berner Zeitung, and 24heures dominate. Ringier publishes the daily tabloid Blick and on Sundays, Sonntagsblick. The CH Media Group publishes a large number of regional newspapers in the Swiss Mittelland (Swiss midlands) (including the Aargauer Zeitung, Luzerner Zeitung, and St. Galler Tagblatt). The NZZ Media Group focuses on the publication of the elite and quality newspapers NZZ and NZZ am Sonntag. The publishing house Editions Suisses Holding dominates cantons of Valais and Neuchâtel with its titles Le Nouvelliste and Arcinfo.
In the broadcasting sector, the degree of concentration can be calculated on the basis of reach for the three language regions (audience market shares). In general, the audio-visual media market in Switzerland is dominated by the programmes of the public broadcaster SRG SSR. The combined market share of the public service radio stations in German-speaking Switzerland is 61 per cent, a number identical to Western Switzerland, and in Italian-speaking Switzerland, almost 74 per cent (SRG SSR, 2019). In contrast to the television sector, foreign radio stations are of little relevance.
SRG SSR’s television programmes compete with numerous foreign stations that share one of Switzerland’s national languages. Around 31 per cent of total airtime (24 hours) is attributable to Switzerland’s public service channels, while 61 per cent is broadcast by foreign channels (SRG SSR, 2020a). However, the advantage of SRG SSR lies in its Swiss perspective and in its provision of domestic information. In addition, there are no private commercial television channels at national level. Over the past 20 years, private commercial television channels have only been able to establish themselves at regional level with limited commercial success.
In German-speaking Switzerland, the two leading public television channels SRF1 and SRF2 achieve an audience share of 28 per cent (for 24 hours). The private commercial regional stations achieve 8 per cent, while foreign stations have a share of 61 per cent (SRG SSR, 2020a). The two leading SRG SSRtelevision channels also have the highest reach in France and Italy (RTS 26% and RSI 24%). Foreign stations from France and Italy follow in the next place (SRG SSR, 2020a).
Taken together, citizens in the three language areas considered at the national level in Switzerland, can choose from newspapers, public and private radio and television programmes and a number of freely accessible online media. However, the decentralised mode of production and the different sensibilities of the respective language groups prevent a comprehensive homogenisation of content and programmes at national level. This also applies, in a limited manner, to the free commuter paper 20Minuten, which dominates the respective newspaper and online market in two of three language regions.
Nevertheless, from the point of view of the Federal Council, indirect funding is necessary on the basis of the current media development in the regional and local area. Thus, the Federal Council has proposed an expansion of indirect press subsidies for regional and local newspapers from CHF 30 million to CHF 50 million. This will also subsidise the distribution of titles with a circulation of 40,000 copies or with a header of more than 100,000 copies. This is where the TX Group and the CH Media benefit most. This is compounded by the fact that emerging online media will find it difficult to transcend an absent legal framework, for which changes will be difficult to manage. In this regard, backward-looking but well-established measures may well be easier to adopt than new and promising ones. Such a press subsidy is also controversial insofar as both the TX Group and the NZZ Media Group are concerned. Both have simultaneously paid dividends to their exclusive shareholders and received state funds for short-time work. According to a press release by the union Syndicom, it is therefore “absolutely irresponsible and cynical of a company to simultaneously pay CHF 37 million in dividends to shareholders, introduce short-time working to maintain jobs and to impose redundancies” (Syndicom, 2020).
These incidents have also caused irritation among publishers. The conflict of objectives is most obvious at the TX Group, because this diversified group has been making high profits for decades but has concurrently implemented staff cuts and centralisation towards its newsrooms. The message to politicians and the public is: we are only prepared to continue the newspaper business if politicians and newspaper readers are prepared to co-finance the publication of a newspaper in such a way that corporate profits are secured for the TX Group in the long term. With the bridging aid for the media provided by the Swiss parliament as support during the Covid-19 crisis, this should be even easier to achieve.
