The SRG is fighting with these four problems
Radio and television
The SRG is fighting with these four problems
The young audience looks away, radio listeners miss the FM reception, the SRG journalists made gross mistakes. The pressure on public broadcasting is growing.
The young people in Switzerland hardly consume linear television. There are also self-inflicted mistakes from the SRG leadership, which cause displeasure among consumers of electronic media. We list the four most important difficulties with which the publicly financed radio and television are fighting:
1. Problem: The audience is outdated
The average television use in Switzerland drops. In the German -speaking part of the country, people consume television programs per day for 104 minutes. Within ten years, TV use has dropped by half an hour.
They are mainly older people who spend time in front of the television. This is shown by the number of spectators from SRF. The main edition of the “Tagesschau” from April 10 was seen by 620,000 people. How many among them were between 15 and 59? Only 151,000. Television is becoming a medium of senior citizens.
The younger generations spend a lot of time with their cell phones and tablets. People who are younger than 30 consume only a few linear television: to watch programs at fixed times is out. The SRG has invested in platforms on which the programs can be looked at time transferred.
A younger audience can be reached primarily with two types of programs: with live events such as sports broadcasts and with series. Swiss television therefore shows a lot of sport. And it increased the funds for fictional in -house productions. The “Tschugger” series was well received by younger spectators.
The “Tschugger” series with David Constantin was well received by the young television audience.
SRG’s German -speaking radio stations of the SRG have lost an average of 18 percent of the SRG’s German -language radio. The losses in western Switzerland – 25 percent – and Italian -speaking Switzerland are even greater: 29 percent.
The SRG radios have lost hundreds of thousands of listeners. They now consume Swiss private radios or foreign stations. Especially in French -speaking Switzerland and Ticino, interest in broadcasters from France and Italy is growing.
The SRG now announces that the trend towards digitization is irreversible and that the listener losses would be smaller over time. In France, however, an end to the FM radio can only be expected in seven years.
Those responsible for the SRG have made a wrong decision. At the end of 2026, all radio stations in Switzerland clever the distribution of FM. The SRG did not want to wait that long because it saves CHF 15 million a year by switching off the FM transmitter systems. This sum is small, measured by the list of listeners and the image damage that the SRG has dealt with.
3. Problem: Traditional supporters are applied
Petitions with many thousands of signatures were submitted, and a rally took place in front of the SRF seat in Basel: the protests of the people were primarily directed against the attitude of the TV company magazine « Faces and Stories » and the radio science magazine.
The program “Faces and Stories” is discontinued. This leads to protests.
The SRG claims to meet the highest journalistic standards. In a short time, the three negative legal findings raise doubts as to whether the SRG meets its quality criteria. This is water on the mills of those who hold political bias in its reporting to broadcasting. And the errors do not help increase the popularity of the SRG. The SRG 2024 lost eight places in the “Ranking Reputation” of the GfK Institute. It still rank 37 among the most popular Swiss companies.
