CH Media withdraws from Sunday market - ten jobs affected

The Saturday editions will be available from the beginning of July as Switzerland at the weekend appear, as CH Media announced on Tuesday. The same step was taken by the newspaper Northwestern Switzerland already in March 2017.

Around ten full-time positions will be cut in the editorial offices in eastern and central Switzerland. A social plan will be applied, emphasizes CH Media, a merger of AZ Medien and NZZ Regionalmedien.

The publishing house must keep its written promise to the staff that layoffs will only be made as a last resort, the Syndicom union announced. Syndicom also points out that hundreds of newspaper salesmen and women will also lose their jobs. However, Syndicom writes that the publishing house is keeping silent about the cuts in sales. The Central Switzerland on Sunday is distributed to mailboxes in central Switzerland early in the morning by around 400 employees.

The Central Switzerland on Sunday was launched in September 2008 because Sunday was increasingly becoming a reading day. The paper started out with the claim of being a regional newspaper alongside the nationally oriented Sunday titles. The publisher at the time, LZ Medien, had entered into a cooperation for the advertisements with the former newspaper Sunday of the Mittelland newspapers.

In 2018, the NZZ Media Group merged Tagblatt Medien in St. Gallen and LZ Medien from Lucerne under the umbrella of regional media; subsequently, in 2016, there was also a change at the Central Switzerland on Sunday to a new layout.

The title was launched by Thomas Bornhauser, and from 2012 it was the responsibility of Dominik Buholzer, who announced his retirement last year. His successor was filled internally by Sasa Rasic.

The Switzerland at the weekend, with regionalized editions, will have a circulation of 350,000 copies. The title will be by far the largest weekend newspaper in Switzerland, CH Media states. The existing newspaper Switzerland at the weekend, which is currently published in the region of northwestern Switzerland, offers many background reports as well as reading material from the subject areas of culture and life in addition to the daily news.

CH Media says it does not rule out the possibility that subscription prices will continue to rise in the future. Declining advertising revenues would force Switzerland's third-largest private media company to rely even more heavily on revenues from the reader market.

With the setting of the Central Switzerland on Sunday and the e-paper Ostschweiz am Sonntag the Sunday market is thinning out. A few years ago, the seventh day of the week was considered a growth area for regional media companies. In the future, German-speaking Switzerland will still publish the SonntagsZeitung, the NZZ on Sunday and the SonntagsBlick. (SDA)

The early delivery organization Presto, which is contracted by the publisher for this purpose, had announced the mass dismissal to its staff and opened the consultation procedure.

With the setting of the Central Switzerland on Sunday and the e-paper published since November 2017. Ostschweiz am Sonntag the media company says it is responding "to the sharp decline in revenues on the advertising market. Unfortunately, the advertising market can no longer support Sunday editions of regional newspapers, Jürg Weber, Managing Director of Publishing CH Media, is quoted as saying in the media release. It was therefore with a heavy heart that the end of Sunday editions had to be decided.

CH Media announced in November that it would save CHF 45 million, or ten percent, within two years. A total of 200 full-time positions are to be cut.