2023-06-15 20:12:16
Jan Weyrauch withdraws candidacy for RBB directorship election
Jan Weyrauch will not run for election as RBB director
Source: dpa/Fabian Sommer
One day before the election, Radio Bremen boss Jan Weyrauch announced that he would not be running in the RBB directorship election after all. The background is a debate about the amount of his pay. Compared to the salary of interim boss Vernau, Weyrauch would have had to accept cuts.
Radio Bremen program director Jan Weyrauch will not compete in the general election of the public ARD broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB). Weyrauch informed the German Press Agency on Thursday – one day before the election – that he had decided not to run. The background is a debate that has arisen about the amount of the future director’s salary in the station.
Weyrauch told the dpa that he had made it clear to the search committee and the RBB supervisory bodies from the start that he was of course prepared to accept cuts compared to the salary of interim boss Katrin Vernau. Vernau’s salary is already well below that of broadcaster Patricia Schlesinger, who was fired without notice after allegations of nepotism. That seems to him to be the order of the day, Weyrauch said.
He continued: “During the process, however, ideas about the salary range of the director’s contract were brought into play, which I cannot go along with from strategic considerations for the subsequent effect on the entire salary structure in the RBB, with all due understanding for the careful and economical use of contribution money .”
Weyrauch was only subsequently publicly presented as a candidate. The committee office had announced: Weyrauch had already belonged to the group of candidates, but was then eliminated due to different views on the contract conditions. Then he did end up on the list because he announced that he was now available for candidacy despite the fact that the framework conditions had not changed. RBB staff representatives had fought to get him on the list and at the same time criticized the fact that the salary issue had been addressed in the application process.
Weyrauch also announced on Thursday evening that it was his hope that there might be a fundamental rethinking of this question in the course of the process through mutual exchange. “But I didn’t get that signal. It is therefore foreseeable that – in the case of my choice – a contract would not come about. Nobody can have an interest in that.” The withdrawal hurts him a lot.
On Friday, the supervisory body of the Broadcasting Council will meet and vote in Potsdam on the award of the highest post in the public ARD broadcaster. There are now only two candidates left for election: Heide Baumann (50, most recently a member of the management board of Vodafone Germany) and Ulrike Demmer (50, from 2016 to 2021 deputy spokeswoman for the past black-red federal government).
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