The public service media fear nothing more than a debate about themselves. About structures, about financing and about the meaning of an offer. The central question: Is public service broadcasting (ÖRR) worth the money?
First France, then Schlesinger. These are not good times for the public broadcasting system.
After the French National Assembly also voted to abolish broadcasting fees and in Germany the RBB director had to give up the ARD presidency after an affair about nepotism and allegations of corruption, the system is once again preoccupied with itself.
In the 8 p.m. Tagesschau, the revolutionary decision from France was not mentioned in the past few days, but Schlesinger’s partial withdrawal made it into a 22-second report yesterday.
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The public service media fear nothing more than a debate about themselves. About structures, about financing and about the sense of an offer that fewer and fewer young people want to consume. Germany affords the most expensive public broadcaster in the world.
Fee payers spend around 8.5 billion euros a year on 21 TV stations and 73 radio stations. That is more than the budget of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. It is 3.5 billion euros more than the federal government spends on the digital pact for schools.
It is 7.5 billion euros more than the annual costs – personnel and operation – of the German Bundestag, after all the second largest parliament in the world. By way of comparison: the British BBC, which is not an inferior special interest channel, manages with just under half the money. The central question: Is public service broadcasting (ÖRR) worth the money?
The case of Schlesinger, who drove a luxury company car and two drivers into an affair involving corruption, nepotism and expense chivalry, but apparently wants to keep her €300,000 post as RBB director, puts the spotlight on a media parallel society of efficiency and transparency, control and criticism, are largely undesirable.
Yes, the fee payer pays. Since 2013 there has been a device-independent fee for state media services. What WDR television director Jörg Schönenborn once called a “democracy levy” is also a fee for a system that allows advertising during prime time, spends 215 million euros on broadcasting football World Cups and millions on hit shows, telenovelas and quiz shows.
And for directors who earn as much as the Federal Chancellor and afford privileges that the managing directors of a medium-sized family company would refuse out of respect for their employees.
In a digitally networked information society, in which everyone can find information on every topic, can such a lavish system still be justified? Why does a liberal society allow mandatory fees for an offer that many do not want to use at all?
Who wants to pay dog tax if you don’t own a dog and never wanted one? Public broadcasters devote a lot of space to identity politics in their programs. They need an identity debate on their own behalf. Who needs the ARD? And if so, how many?
The post-war mandate to set up a basic media service as a bulwark against party propaganda has been fulfilled. It still needs excellent information and political education, but not a full program with carnival, slapstick and Kai Pflaume. There are five arguments in favor of downsizing the public service system.
According to surveys, the average user of ARD and ZDF is 62 years old. For comparison: At ProSiebenSat.1 it is 37 years.
What is more important is that young people today show a completely different usage behavior than the program managers of ARD/ZDF want to admit. In the ranking of favorite channels among 12 to 19 year olds, ProSieben is 13 percent ahead of RTL (12 percent) and Netflix (10 percent).
ARD and ZDF are only in front with 4 percent of those surveyed. If YouTube, the world’s largest broadcaster, had been queried, the list would have looked different. And: Three million people refuse to pay the fee and risk that the bailiff will be at the door. Apparently they don’t want the offer that the state is foisting on them.
“If I can sum up the policy of such a broadcaster in two words, then they are objectivity and objectivity.” This is how Hugh Carleton Greene, the former BBC employee, described the mission of Northwest German Broadcasting, founded in 1946. But is that even possible when politics occupies central posts in the supervisory bodies?
When the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder sits in the ZDF interview, there should actually be a disclaimer on the screen: Our controller in an interview. Because the CSU politician sits on the ZDF board of directors and thus watches over the budget and directorship of the Mainz station.
Despite the ruling by the Constitutional Court that the state-related representatives in the bodies should be reduced to one third, politics is still the largest group with 147 MPs, government employees and local representatives.
Leading ARD journalists admit internally: Top jobs such as editor-in-chief or managing the capital city studio are assigned to the respective state institutions, which in turn are sometimes considered “red” (WDR) or “black” (BR).
Efficient structures and logical decisions are rarely made due to party dominance and federal inflexibility. Years ago, when ARD editors suggested that the political broadcaster Phoenix, which operates in the Rhineland, should be located in the capital Berlin, NRW Prime Minister Jürgen Rüttgers blocked the idea in conjunction with the powerful WDR.
Today, Phoenix is based in Bonn, but has offices in Berlin. And the most important newsroom of all ARD stations is in Hamburg. The political program “Hart aber fair” has to be produced in Cologne because WDR wants it that way. So politicians travel from Berlin, WDR pays the travel expenses.
It’s no different with ZDF. There are the “friends” of the parties, who work out jobs and thus also the direction of the broadcasters among themselves. If the director is close to the SPD, the editor-in-chief must be close to the CDU. The game works in a similar way.
The broadcasters do little to refute the accusation that the editors at ARD and ZDF tend to the political left camp and the journalistic principle – don’t get involved with anything, not even with a good one! – left at the cloakroom.
This started with the refugee crisis, when the negative sides of immigration were ignored, as the University of Mainz found in a study years ago.
The head of the WDR magazine Monitor, Georg Restle, publicly declares that he considers “neutral” journalism to be a lifelong lie and particularly likes to work on conservatives. Tina Hassel, the editor-in-chief of ARD, had to defend herself against sharp criticism after a euphoric tweet at the Green party conference.
A Kika presenter posed with activists throwing stones at a demonstration against Israel in Palestine. In a ZDF report, a photo of a nuclear power plant was manipulated with dark clouds allegedly bubbling out of the reactors into the atmosphere.
A former program director reports from a WDR editorial conference: “Anyone who mentions the name Christian Lindner can pack their topic straight away.” A survey of 77 volunteers on ARD showed that 57 percent would vote for the Greens. Not representative, but a small mood picture.
The public broadcasters are gigantic, self-sustaining apparatuses. Almost every broadcaster has its own technical department (WDR alone has 1,800 employees). In addition, legal departments, building management, archives, operational management and our own symphony orchestra. There are choirs and big bands.
Around 4,200 people are employed at WDR alone. The Cologne broadcaster spends 500 million euros a year on staff and keeps an art collection comprising 600 works that is said to be worth millions.
The WDR has more buildings in Cologne City than the Catholic Church. It only has the cathedral. Mergers fail because of country vanities. When Südwestrundfunk proposed merging with Saarländisches Rundfunk in 2021, Saarbrücken reacted promptly: “Cooperation stops where the sovereignty of the state broadcaster is violated.”
A former WDR director who questioned Radio Bremen and wanted to turn it into a special station for migrants had a similar experience. He almost had to leave, the reactions were so outraged. Every broadcaster wants to remain as a full institution.
Phoenix, the information channel operated jointly by ARD and ZDF, was never able to become a national news broadcaster because the news editors of the individual stations did not want to give up their competence.
Today, the ARD is building up exactly this channel on the network with Tagesschau24. Of course, Phoenix should stay anyway. When the Chancellor goes on a trip, a quarter of the 20 or so journalist seats on the government plane have to be kept free for colleagues from ZDF, ARD and a public radio station. point of honor!
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The system suffocates in the costs that it created itself: personnel. Of the 8.5 billion euros spent on ARD and ZDF, almost 2 billion are spent on staff every year, and a further 667.9 million euros have to be set aside for old-age provision. There is also no modesty in the construction of their headquarters.
The costs for the renovation of the Cologne WDR headquarters currently amount to 240 million euros – 80 million were planned. Despite the record funding from the fee payers, the broadcasters do not want to forgo advertising revenue. Since 1994, the Commission for Determining Financial Needs (KEF) has been supposed to check whether everything really has to be like this.
The body is based in Mainz and is “organizationally tied to the State Chancellery”, which is also where the chairman of the ZDF board of directors, Malu Dreyer (SPD), sits. You can already guess how independently the KEF checks. At the beginning of 2020, the KEF vote was: Fees must increase. 15 state parliaments agreed, only Saxony-Anhalt temporarily resisted, but was called back by the constitutional court.
Result: The fee increased by 86 cents to 18.36 euros per month. After all, this should remain so until 2024.
Conclusion: Of course, this country needs an independent broadcasting system that offers cross-party and cross-topic education and information. Even where private providers don’t go because it’s not worth it, but it’s indispensable for a democratic society.
There are many good program examples on ARD and ZDF. Therefore, no ax is needed for a reform, just a well-oiled circular saw with which one can be cut from two frayed blocks that are jammed. Not ZDF and ARD. But ZDF or ARD.
Michael Bröcker is editor-in-chief of Media Pioneer. The free morning briefing can be found here: www.gaborsteingart.com
