Hansruedi Schoch
Johann (“Hansruedi”) Schoch
Just after High School I started out as a photographer and reporter for a local newspaper in Switzerland, worked the beat as a police, court and political reporter for the national news agency, and finally ended up as a freelancer (and assistant to my social anthropologist wife) in South East Asia. After our return to Switzerland I met my first love, radio, which incidentally was just a short affair, because soon after I got hooked up with my real true love, TV, to which I have been faithful for the last 15 years. My various positions at SF Schweizer Fernsehen have included reporter, producer and foreign editor for “Tagesschau” and other news programmes and producer/director for the award winning special programme “SF Spezial,” which specializes in complex 24-hour live programmes and innovative travel formats. At the end of the 90’s I tried my luck helping to build the first nationwide private TV station in Switzerland, which after a very promising start turned out to be not much more than a footnote in Swiss media history, but was an extremely exciting and insightful experience. I’m safely back in the arms of the public broadcaster now, currently serving as the deputy head of the information department in charge of current affairs and documentaries and programme/format developer. My favorite quote of 2008 is one of the newly elected Swiss defense minister, Ueli Maurer, “I never watch the news on TV. Why should I waste half an hour of my precious time for information I can get in three minutes on the Internet?” Mr. Maurer is 58, a member of the very traditionalistic People’s Party and against mostly everything that could bring change to our country. Interesting times for my real true love.
