Bakel Walden

Career to date

Bakel Walden studied Media Planning, Development and Consultancy at the Universities of Siegen (Germany) and Poitiers (France), graduating with an M.A.. He also completed an Executive MBA at IMD business school in Lausanne. Starting in 2002, he completed a traineeship as Entertainment Editor at RTL in Cologne. He went on to work in a range of roles in the course of a ten-year career with RTL Group, including as part of the strategy team at their Luxembourg headquarters (2006–2008) and as Head of Programme Planning and Development for its Greek subsidiary Alpha TV (2009–2012). From 2012 to 2017 Bakel was head of SRF’s Programme Strategy Division, where he was responsible for optimising schedules, positioning and designing the SRF product range, and analysing the performance of vectors and content. He has been SRG’s Director of Development and Offering since January 2018.

Offices held

European Broadcasting Union (Member of the TV Committee, chairman Eurovision Song Contest Reference Group, member of the General Assembly); Mediapulse (member of the Board of Directors); Swiss Unesco Commission (member); Viasuisse AG (member of the Board of Directors); Civis-Medienstiftung (member of the Programme Advisory Board); Fondation pour la création numérique (member of the Foundation Board)