media column
The Gubrist Experiment
With the opening of the Gubrist tunnel, Transport Minister Albert Rösti is also making media and VHF policy.
Transport and Media Minister Albert Rösti opens the third tube at the Gubrist Tunnel.
Bild: Urs Flüeler/Keystone
The Gubrist is the most modern motorway tunnel in Switzerland. A month ago, the newly elected Minister of Transport, Albert Rösti, inaugurated its third tube. The Gubrist is a novelty across Switzerland: FM programs can no longer be received inside. What is special is that most drivers still listen to their favorite stations on this wave. The reason: the tunnel planners assumed that VHF would be replaced by DAB at the present time, as required by the Federal Office of Communications, the radio associations and also the SRG. And so the transmission of FM waves was avoided inside the tunnel.
But now the new media minister – nota bene, also Albert Rösti – has decided differently: VHF will remain for another two years. The long-awaited dying has been postponed, exit seems non-existent in the radio sector. He was convinced by the arguments put forward by media pioneer Roger Schawinski, who single-handedly fought the shutdown of the VHF network with a petition.
FM waves, of all things, made the Zurich native a media star, the Che Guevara of private radio, when he made Switzerland happy for the first time in 1979 with Radio 24 from the Italian Pizzo Groppera. But back to the Gubrist: If you take it very precisely, the VHF reception in the new tunnel is a real existing subjunctive. That’s what it could sound like if VHF really shouldn’t exist anymore. Dä Rösti is really de Gröschti: there is no more transparency in politics as a whole. Even if it’s just ugly noise.