Swiss Media Association remains critical despite SRG's withdrawal from Admeira
Even if SRG sells its Admeira shares: The Swiss Media Association still has concerns that there could be market distortions.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Swiss Media Association (VSM) welcomes SRG's withdrawal as a shareholder from Admeira and calls for transparency regarding the agreements reached. With its announcements, SRG is showing its willingness to implement the better consideration for the private sector already announced after the No Billag vote, the publishers' association praises.
However, the planned marketing of SRG advertising by Admeira continues to lead to the risk of market distortion, warns the Swiss Media Association, which has always been one of Admeira's harshest critics. Admeira would continue to have exclusive access to SRG's advertising inventory as well as Swisscom's TV platform, putting other independent media houses at a disadvantage, the VSM said.
In the view of the Publishers Association, the next step is to examine whether the planned sale of the Admeira shares and the exclusive marketing contract are subject to a notification obligation with the Competition Commission and the Federal Office of Communications. As long as the sale has not been completed, the repetition of the notification procedure for cooperation with Admeira ordered by the Federal Court will continue unchanged.
In addition to marketing, there is also a need for clear rules in other areas, the association demands. In online activities, the announced partial waiver of text contributions does not go far enough. The publishers also believe that SRG should be able to play out all broadcast content - linear and time-delayed. However, the VSM is calling for greater self-restraint on text contributions, as ARD and ZDF have agreed with newspaper publishers in Germany. In the future, the public broadcasters will concentrate on audio and moving image content and will only use text in very few cases, for example, when it comes to making sound and image recordings findable via search engines.
In its statement on the consultation process for the new media law, the Publishers Association will advocate a complementary range of private and public media, but will also demand that the press, as the most important medium for shaping opinion, be included in the design and financing of the future Swiss media landscape in accordance with its importance.
