Main features of the daily and weekly press are:
- Still a large number of regional titles, but no subscription national newspapers (due to four different languages)
- A regional newspaper market (owned by big publishing houses) that remains strong but highly depends on shrinking advertising income
- An increase in economic and journalistic concentration
- A free-of-charge daily press with a large share of readership (20 Minuten and Blick am Abend).
- A steadily shrinking newspaper readership over two decades
- The vanishing of quality and investigative journalism because of cost-savings measures
Media concentration forces single newspaper titles to sell, to merge or to shut down. More and more small and medium-size newspapers have been forced out of the market or have been taken over by large publishing companies. Therefore, all common forms of press concentration - publisher concentration (a declining number of publishing houses), journalistic concentration (a declining number of fully staffed papers), and a concentration of circulation can be observed in Switzerland. This tendency towards concentration also leads to increasing co-operation between publishing houses in logistics and printing. All daily newspapers in Switzerland featuring a circulation over 50,000 copies are owned by multimedia companies.
Tamedia has acquired many larger and smaller regional newspapers in the last decade such as 24heures and the tabloid Le Matin. Tamedia AG reaches almost 40 percent of the press market share in the German-speaking region and over 60 percent in the French-speaking part. Tamedia AG publishes Tages-Anzeiger (140,196), the Sunday paper SonntagsZeitung (160,298), the Berner Zeitung (96,804), as well as Der Bund (39,948). Tamedia also publishes 20 Minuten (442,994) in the German-and 20 minutes (183,498) in the French-speaking part, a Monday-to-Friday daily for commuters, which is free of charge. The title 20 minuti for the Italian-of Switzerland has a circulation of 31,929 copies. In addition, in 2010, Tamedia bought the three leading daily newspapers 24Heures (55,279), Le Matin (40'682) and Tribune de Genève (36,393).
Other significant media players include the NZZ media group, with its flagship Neue Zürcher Zeitung (90,011), a nationally and internationally highly regarded daily newspaper, as well regional newspapers in eastern and central Switzerland, like Neue Luzerner Zeitung (114,109) and St. Galler Tagblatt (117,529). It also publishes the third Sunday newspaper in the greater region of Zurich, NZZ am Sonntag (103,714) as well as two regional Sunday Papers: Zentralschweiz am Sonntag (90'123) and Ostschweiz am Sonntag (48,307).
The multimedia group Ringier AG, one of the largest publishing companies, owns the daily tabloid Blick (circulation: 143,329), the free evening sheet Blick am Abend (270,984) and Sonntagsblick (172,551), the leading Sunday paper. Ringier also publishes the weekly magazine Schweizer Illustrierte (143,080) and the daily newspaper Le Temps (28,410) in the French-speaking region of Switzerland. Both Ringier and Tamedia are based in Zurich and are owned by one single family each. Thus, Tamedia went public 12 years ago offering 20 percent of their shares. The third-biggest multimedia Company is The AG für die Neue Zürcher Zeitung, also situated in Zurich.