German Broadcasters face the same challenges
The situation of regional broadcasters and thematic channels in Germany

by Klaus Linke

When having a look at the situation of regional and thematic TV channels, it appears evident that the mistakes lay in the detail. In my presentation, I will concentrate on the situation in Germany with its particularity of the publicly funded TV channels; at the same time, I'm aware that only certain aspects of our situation also apply to other European countries.

The regional chain of the publicly funded television more or less fulfils its programme assignment: they broadcast local information and minority programmes, but needn't worry about acceptance among the audience or quota, as they are financed by reception fees. However, they represent a problem for private regional broadcasters, as they reduce their vitally necessary audience quota. Therefore, the launching of the private regional TV-project with the highest audience potential in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen was postponed until next year.

Among the existing three private regional channels, only the Bavarian project stands on safe grounds, which is less due to the project itself, than to the fact that the governing political party (CSU) supports it for prestige reasons - sometimes with methods beyond the law, as a number of scandals have proved in the past.
Berlin and Hamburg struggle on two fronts: On the one hand, there are the publicly funded channels that stand for the serious news coverage, on the other hand, topics that bring high quotas, such as sex, crime and neighbourhood-tragedies, are covered by the interregional and national private channels.

As for theme channels, their only chance are at the moment the packages of digital suppliers, where weather-, home shopping-, travel-channels etc. find a modest success. It is most questionable if all the news channels will survive. Only NTV has so far been able to conquer an acceptable market share. The music channels have lately suffered from collapsing audience quotas, a phenomenon that merits further observation.

The situation is even more dramatic in the internet. Among consumers the opinion is clearly that internet is and has to stay a medium free of charge. The only content that can actually be sold over the internet is sex. It is therefore impossible to refinance internet services via charges.


Klaus Linke - Publisher & Editor in Chief of "Production Reality" (DE)