International News Presentation: Past and Present

Had never thought about the language issue in Switzerland - isn't there like four official languages. How does that play out on TV then?

Three separate services for the German, French and Italian speakers, with Rumantsch optouts from the German and Italian services in the canton of Graubünden. Historically in Analogue times the German area would have two German channels and relay the first French and Italian services, the same practice occurred in the French and Italian sectors. Now with digital TV all services are simulcast to a greater degree throughout the country. Cable has always been widespread too surprisingly even in some of the mountainous regions.

There are four different PSB services

Have a read of the drop downs under Radio and Television top left here:-

http://www.srgssr.ch/en/radio/radiotelevisiun-svizra-rumantscha/

Yes, French, German, Italian and Romansh. It's pretty complicated, but This Wikipedia page is pretty comprehensive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_Switzerland

One of the Swiss regional channels, Kanal/Canal 9 broadcasts split French and German channels as it's a border area for those speakers.

Switzerland is an interesting market with domestic channels competing with channels from neighbouring countries which share the same languages. TF1 Groupe and M6 provide Swiss variants for advertising and some of the German based channels also offer the same thing.

Swiss cable and IPTV providers also provide channels from the UK for example thanks to the law in the country that allows providers to distribute FTA channels that can be received in the country, although the likes of Zattoo have distribution agreements with BBC Worldwide etc.

Sometimes the news services of the Swiss public broadcasters exchange their staff. It happened twice if I remember well.

In the link below, the news bulletin of the French-Speaking RTS, presented by a journalist of the Italian-speaking RSI; and also the news bulletin of the RSI anchored by a journalist of the RTS. The staff of both of these broadcasters contributed to the preparation of each other's evening newscasts of that day. 25th november 2014

http://www.rsi.ch/news/ticino-e-grigioni-e-insubria/Riguarda-il-TG-confederale-3163327.html

It also happened between the RTS and the SRF in 2013.

This has been posted here before, but perhaps it's relevant to our discussion; a 2016 compilation featuring pretty much all Swiss news intros -- national, regional, and local; German, French, Italian, and Romansh; public and commercial:

Thanks for the additional info. Looks like they all come under one banner of SRG SSR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Broadcasting_Corporation

I imagine regional broadcasting is also pretty strong in Switzerland considering how important the Cantons are in the make up of the country. (And way off topic but Switzerland never seems to crop up in discussions on the form a post-Brexit Britain could take)

It looks like the long-awaited rebrand of i-Télé into CNews will happen on February 27:

i-Télé deviendra CNews, avec Elkabbach en matinale https://t.co/2ol8Rq2pOV #media

— Simon Souris (@simonsouris) February 2, 2017

CNN International; World News from Atlanta and London, 1992:

For a while in 1999 and 2000, RTL and ProSieben even aired a joint news opt-out for Switzerland:



I believe ProSeiben and Sat1 still air weather-only opt-outs for Switzerland.

Suomi Kutsuu (Finland Calling), WLUC TV-6, Marquette, Michigan (2009)



The Upper Peninsula of Michigan has a high concentration of Finnish-Americans, enough to have a mixed Finnish/English talkshow that ran until 2015.