After criticism of “abolition”
Magdeburg CDU discusses ARD “restructuring”
01/18/2022, 5:47 p.m
The CDU parliamentary group in Saxony-Anhalt is causing a stir with considerations about a very slimmed-down future for ARD. The managing director now specifies that he did not want to “abolish” the station. However, he is sticking to the idea of a conversion.
After criticism, the parliamentary manager of the CDU parliamentary group in Saxony-Anhalt, Markus Kurze, has reclassified statements on the future of the ARD main program. “I should have expressed myself better,” he said in the afternoon when asked. Kurz had previously told the “Mitteldeutsche Zeitung” that the CDU parliamentary group wanted to “abolish the station “Das Erste” as an independent channel in the long term”. The word “abolish” is not correct, Kurz conceded. “Convert is correct.”
According to his ideas, the first one should be developed more into a “showcase for the regions”, in which the productions of the individual radio stations get more broadcasting time. In the CDU parliamentary group there is still no concrete concept, and no decision has been made, as parliamentary group leader Siegfried Borgwardt confirmed. He spoke of a “misleading choice of words”, and Kurz had also admitted this “mistake”.
More regional in the main program
Kurz’s statements in the newspaper had caused a great deal of cross-party criticism, both at state and federal level. Journalists’ unions reacted with outrage. With his statement, Kurz resorted to a year-old suggestion from Saxony-Anhalt’s Minister of Culture Rainer Robra, who brought such a model into play in 2017. Robra was also a guest at the closed meeting of the CDU parliamentary group on Monday, where the topic was discussed. A government spokesman said in response to a dpa request to Robra that there had only been a debate about anchoring regional topics from the state broadcasters more firmly in the ARD main program.
The CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament in Magdeburg was the linchpin of the protest against the increase in the nationwide broadcasting fee in 2020 and last year. The then black-red-green coalition around Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff of the CDU threatened to break up. The blockade in Saxony-Anhalt led to the Federal Constitutional Court finally deciding. The broadcasting fee has now been increased, and the judges also put the state in its place.