– The ARD is to be radically restructured
Public radio and television are also criticized in Germany. A commission with former SRG director Roger de Weck is pointing out new paths.
Published: January 18, 2024, 6:00 p.m
What should a public broadcaster achieve today? Roger de Weck, former general director of the SRG, and Julia Jäkel, the well-known media manager, present the report of the “Future Commission” of the 16 German federal states in Berlin.
Photo: Rolf Zöllner (Imago Images)
Whether in Great Britain, Austria, Germany or Switzerland: public television and radio financed by citizens is under enormous pressure everywhere. It is complained that it is too expensive, has a political impact and almost only reaches old people. Although usage and credibility are still high overall, acceptance is dwindling, especially in conservative circles.
The AfD wants to abolish the compulsory fee
In 2018, a civil rights initiative to abolish radio and television fees failed at the ballot box in Switzerland. Now the SVP and the Young Liberals are calling for an initiative to “halve” the fees from 335 to 200 francs per year. The Federal Council wants to counteract the project by reducing it to 300 francs.
In Germany, however, the tax is set to rise from 220 to 227 euros next year. However, 6 of the 16 federal states have already announced that they will not support the increase. If this remains the case, ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio will have to sue the Federal Constitutional Court for an increase in their funding, as they did in 2021.
In Germany, too, the debate has long been no longer about a few euros more or less fees, but about the whole thing: the AfD, for example, wants to abolish the compulsory fee completely and continue to operate public TV and radio with a tenth of the current resources.
Merge ARD and ZDF – or radio and ZDF?
The demands of the CDU, CSU and FDP are not that radical, but many of their proposals would turn the system on its head: In an effort to save money, ARD and ZDF should be merged, it is said – or Deutschlandradio and ZDF. The ARD could concentrate on the regional, the ZDF on the national, the public broadcasters could forego entertainment and sport in favor of the private ones.
Markus Söder, Prime Minister of Bavaria and head of the CSU, outlined a brutal savings plan this week: around 20 channels could be dispensed with, including the small state broadcasters in Bremen and Saarland, as well as 14 of 72 radio programs, half of the 10 special interest channels and half of the 24 choirs and orchestras. In addition, no director should earn more than a prime minister, around 250,000 euros.
This is the wrong way forward, says an eight-member expert commission that was tasked with drafting a reform for ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio. The public broadcasters urgently need to become more efficient, but this can be achieved differently than through mergers and clear-cutting, said former media manager Julia Jäkel, chairwoman of the “Future Commission”, at the presentation of the project 37-page report out of.
The future committee’s proposals are hardly less revolutionary than Söder’s appeals for austerity: the ARD, which devours around 70 percent of the 10 billion euros that the public broadcasters in Germany have available annually, is to be radically restructured.
Eliminate duplication
For historical reasons, ARD has remained a loose “working group” of nine independent state broadcasters to this day. However, the challenges of the future can no longer be overcome in such a structure, said Jäkel.
Instead, the proposal is to turn ARD into its own institution that would take care of everything central, while the state institutions would only be responsible for regional matters. This would mean that the state broadcasters would lose some of their autonomy, but at the same time they would be able to concentrate on what was crucial for acceptance: whether their content was useful for local democracy or not.
“Coordination is no longer enough,” said former SRG general director Roger de Weck, a member of the commission, in justifying the move. “The ARD now needs organization and leadership.” The new structure will eliminate a lot of duplication and minimize the enormous coordination effort. Jäkel added that politicians would then have to decide whether the savings should be used to reduce TV and radio contributions or to invest the funds in better programming.
The battle for TV and radioDominique Eigenmann has been a Germany correspondent in Berlin since 2015. After studying German and philosophy in Zurich and Paris, he began writing for the “Tages-Anzeiger” in 1994.More information@eigenmannberlin
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2024-01-18 21:16:13
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