It’s official: Public broadcasting in Germany is being reformed. The first step is the task of what the broadcasters should do.
The federal states want to sharpen the mandate of public service broadcasting in Germany and have agreed on changes in the state treaty. The prime ministers announced this on Thursday after their meeting in Berlin.
The federal states had been dealing with the topic for a long time – since 2016. In a later reform step, they basically want to look at the financing of public service broadcasting with ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio. Households in this country pay a monthly license fee of 18.36 euros.
The Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer (SPD), as chairwoman of the state broadcasting commission, emphasized: “We cannot allow ourselves to get into formal disputes again when the next question about a contribution decision is made.” The amount of the license fee is adjusted from time to time – with the last increase, Saxony-Anhalt opposed the other states and caused a delay.
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Opinion and information must be clearly separated
Concrete wording on how the State Media Treaty on order reform should be changed was not initially known. Dreyer named a few key points. The brand core of public service broadcasting is education, culture, information, advice – “and it is also entertainment if it corresponds to a public service profile”. In the run-up to the event, there had been a broad public discussion about the importance of entertainment in the programme. Broadcasters and members of the Broadcasting Council had appealed that entertainment should continue to be part of the order.
However, there were also critical voices from politics who called for a reduction in the number of entertainment formats in public service broadcasting and referred to the offer in private TV stations. Dreyer said of the role of entertainment in the program that it is up to the broadcasters how they prioritize.
The state treaty should also state that opinions and information must be clearly separated. Dreyer added that many citizens had indicated in the preliminary participation process that there was “too much reporting, according to their feeling, where it is no longer possible to distinguish: is this actually objective reporting or is it an opinion or is it all mixed up?” They want to include a clarification on this in the state treaty.
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The independent bodies in the broadcasters – these are the broadcasting councils (ARD), radio council (Deutschlandradio) and television council (ZDF), which are made up of many areas of society and whose members oversee the program work of the broadcasters – should have more opportunities to have a say in quality standards and cost control to get.
This is also an important point: Until now, the states had stated in the state treaty that not only main programs but also special interest channels such as ZDFinfo should be broadcast linearly as a continuous TV program. This will change: In the future, the ARD joint program Das Erste, the ZDF main program, the third programs of the ARD broadcasters as well as Arte and 3sat will definitely be available on continuous TV.
The states want the broadcasters to decide for themselves in the future how the content of the other programs will be distributed – continuous TV coupled with digital, or only online. This should also give more freedom of movement in the rapidly changing media consumption. The public broadcasters currently offer these special interest channels: Tagesschau24, Phoenix, KiKa, ZDFinfo, ZDFneo, ARD alpha and One.
Public service broadcasting: New future secured
With the agreement of the heads of government, a draft with the changes in the state treaty can now be drawn up and the state parliaments are involved. The revised state treaty could be signed by the prime ministers in October.
Media policy in Germany is a matter for the federal states. These define the framework of public service broadcasting. It’s not about specific program content. That is in the hands of the broadcasters themselves – with a view to the constitutionally protected freedom of the press.
The Saxon Media Minister Oliver Schenk (CDU) informed the German Press Agency that an important intermediate step had now been reached. It is now also in the interest of the contributors to address the reform of broadcasting financing, which is of particular importance for further strengthening the acceptance of public service broadcasting.
ARD said: “Today the prime ministers set the course for securing the future of public broadcasting, and we are very pleased about that. A written version of the new state treaty is now being prepared, it will form the basis for further parliamentary deliberations and also be our content evaluation in the ARD.”
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