Swiss freesheets change the landscape

The death of the newspaper has been predicted often enough. The advent of radio, then television, was supposed to kill it off. It did not happen. Today, it is the internet that is predicted to make newspapers obsolete. The Swiss are doing a test run by treating the daily newspaper as a carrier of advertising and giving it away for free in order to reach as many people as possible - precisely what content-providers on the internet are doing.

The newspaper-less future in Switzerland thus begins with a deluge of newspapers. Go to any major train station in Switzerland and you will be wading through the stuff, with a couple of papers distributed in the morning and another one in the afternoon. And the latest entry to an already crowded market, launched last week, targets potential readers even earlier in their daily commute - right on their doorstep.

Free newspapers are not a Swiss invention. But this country of just 7.4 million now has six free dailies, with a seventh in planning - and five of these serve just the German-speaking part of Switzerland, or 4.7 million people. This may be a reflection of the Swiss being more likely than their German or French neighbours to make use of an excellent rail system for their daily commute.

It also reflects the high degree of urbanisation: rural areas are not served by these papers since distribution would be too expensive. Off the record, advertising executives are also mumbling that rural readers are not quite worth the trouble.

In terms of content, the main premise of the freesheets, or ‘freelies’, is to run all the news that is fit to print, as long as it can be read in about 20 minutes, the length of a typical commute in small Switzerland. The most successful free newspaper is even called 20 Minutes, while another named itself Heute (today). A paper set to be launched at the end of the year is called News.

20 Minutes started publication in 1999 and was among the first in Switzerland to adopt the tabloid format (easier to read on a crowded tram or train). It did not, however, ignite a format war à l’anglaise: tabloids still tend to be seen as less serious than broadsheets and Switzerland’s pioneering tabloid, the paid-for Blick, is doing badly. But 20 Minutes is not. It reaches some 1.2 million readers every day and generates staggering profits - an estimated 35 million Swiss francs (€21m) in 2006, according to media reports - for its owner, the publisher of Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger. Not surprising, then, that Tamedia is trying to replicate that success by starting News.

Among the most interesting developments of the year in the Swiss media market was the launch on 19 September of yet another free daily called Punkt.ch (or dot.ch - an awkward name based on the internet country code for Switzerland).

The newcomer is setting itself apart with an elegant layout and slightly more serious coverage. Its true distinguishing feature, however, is its attempt to catch readers already at their front door, through agreements with property management firms that allow the paper to place dispensers in apartment buildings, apart from delivering them directly to single-unit homes.

"The established newspapers are under increasing pressure on both the advertising and the content front," says a veteran newspaperman who predicts further consolidation but also sees an opportunity for traditional titles to position themselves in a quality niche. The future, he thinks, may well belong to ‘boutique newspapers’ at the upper end of the market and the freelies at the lower end.

The only Swiss daily with international resonance is the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, whose total print run stood just below 150,000 in 2006 (with some 18,000 copies sold abroad) and which has Switzerland’s best foreign coverage, provided by more than 40 reporters based abroad. The other main newspapers whose reach goes beyond their home regions are the Zurich-based Tages-Anzeiger (print run 225,000), with some 25 foreign correspondents, and Geneva-based Le Temps (with a print run of 46,000). The freelies’ main worry is littering, especially troubling to the neat Swiss, which could yet provoke a backlash against the papers. But a more serious challenge lies in their extraordinary vulnerablity to the business cycle. This may not be a problem in the booming Alpine republic at the moment - but it is bound to become acute as soon as the economy dips. The Swiss may well have to do with just a couple of freelies then.

The death of the newspaper has been predicted often enough. The advent of radio, then television, was supposed to kill it off. It did not happen. Today, it is the internet that is predicted to make newspapers obsolete. The Swiss are doing a test run by treating the daily newspaper as a carrier of advertising and giving it away for free in order to reach as many people as possible - precisely what content-providers on the internet are doing.