Reform of ARD and ZDF: “The public broadcasters are in a downward spiral”

2024-01-18 18:06:52

Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder presented it on Wednesday. Public broadcasting should become significantly leaner, so Saarland Broadcasting could be absorbed into Südwestrundfunk and Radio Bremen could be housed under Norddeutscher Rundfunk. At least 14 of the 72 radio programs would be dispensable, and the future of the smaller television channels would also have to be examined. The salaries of executives need to be adjusted (downwards, of course), the administration needs to be streamlined and the number of radio orchestras needs to be halved. Söder’s suggestions are pretty catchy; the overarching goal of keeping the broadcasting fee at least stable can be quickly grasped.

Things now look a little different with the report that was published on Thursday by the so-called “Future Councilfor the development of public broadcasting. The state prime ministers appointed this committee to get help with the necessary reform of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandfunk – because the media is a state matter. Eight experts from the media industry and lawyers spent about nine months working on the task of what a contribution-financed media system would have to look like from 2030 and beyond in order to be accepted by the population. Which has many shades, including the quality of reporting and appropriate contribution levels.

The experts wrote down their recommendations on 37 pages, chaired by Julia Jäkel, the former head of the Gruner + Jahr publishing house, and the former constitutional judge and law professor Peter M. Huber. The proposals, as can be seen at second glance, are more far-reaching than they initially sound. In a statement, the members said straightforwardly: “What is needed is not just changes in the System, but conversions of the system.” Although the institutions’ desire for reform has been taken into account, the speed of change is far too slow. The broadcasting system is “a separate system with its own rules of conduct” – but these now have to change.

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Nevertheless, the recommendations cannot be forced into simple cuts and austerity demands. The green A4 booklet is, in a sense, an anti-Söder paper, even if there are differences in assessments when it comes to criticizing the institutions’ speed of change. There are two core topics in the paper, on the one hand the mission of public broadcasting, on the other hand the structure of the broadcasters and their financing.

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Armageddon Championship Series

First of all, the order that needs to be “sharpened”. Which means that the institutions should work “for a stronger orientation towards the common good and democracy”. The institutions are already using the term “common good broadcaster”, but this obviously doesn’t convince the experts. The Future Council is concerned with “more innovation, differentiation and dialogue with citizens”. The broadcasters see them as “calm explainers”. The reference to greater differentiation refers both to the separation of ARD and ZDF from each other, as well as to the separation from the private broadcasters’ programs.

In terms of content, what is needed is “above-average innovative” formats and “not predominantly tried and tested”. Although there is still a need for entertainment and sport, one passage highlights the culture, which is at the core of the offer. Of course, the odds show again and again that what is successful is “mostly the tried and tested”. The Future Council is convinced, however, that a fixation on what works with audiences in the short term – i.e. programs that are designed exclusively for reach – will lead to less acceptance in the medium term. The report dedicates a separate sub-section to the balance of content, touching on the often heard accusation that the ARD and ZDF programs are too “left-leaning”.

Julia Jäkel and Roger de Weck presenting the report of the Future Council for the Development of Public Broadcasting.

Source: dpa

A significant suggestion is to link the financing process to the fulfillment of the contract. The institutions should no longer register their financial needs with the Commission for Determining Financial Needs (KEF) and then it will be checked what the actual needs look like. Instead, the commission should be supplemented by additional experts and check whether the institutions are “fully” fulfilling their mandate. If this is not the case, it may be shortened. The criteria for fulfilling the order are: reliability, diversity, innovation, comprehensibility and transparency. An example: All parts of the population must be reached by the offers, not just German citizens. Significant conflicts regarding the definition and evaluation of the criteria are to be expected here.

The Future Council also comments on the controversial broadcasting fee. Although the overall budget for the institutions should be linked to an index (this proposal has already been made), this should not result in the threat of a constant increase in the contribution. Rather, it is hoped that all recommendations will actually be implemented and that savings will follow in the medium term. In fact, the federal states, which now have to discuss the recommendations in the joint broadcasting council, will find it difficult to pick out individual points – ultimately, this reform proposal only works as a whole package. Which is what makes the paper so appealing as a thought experiment.

Also present at the presentation in Berlin was Roger de Weck, former editor-in-chief of “Zeit” and later also general director of the counterpart to ARD and ZDF, the Swiss Radio and Television Company (SRG).* All suggestions, said de Weck, were based on existing ones Reforms that already exist to some extent. “Everything just has to happen much faster.” In addition to the mandate to the Future Council, other reform processes are underway in the institutions and, last but not least, there are proposals from the parties; most recently the CDU/CSU presented a reform program.

“ARD becomes strategically capable”

But about the structure as the Future Council imagines it. The first thing that stands out here is that the Future Council is primarily concerned with the ARD and less with the DF and Deutschlandradio. This mainly has to do with the federal structure of ARD, i.e. its division into nine state broadcasters. 70 percent of the contribution revenue of around 8.5 billion euros per year goes to the ARD family. According to the Future Council’s idea, the previous working group should be replaced by a unified ARD station, which should force better organization. “The ARD is becoming capable of strategy,” says Julia Jäkel. The state broadcasters grouped under the umbrella should primarily take care of regional programming. As a result, multiple structures should be dismantled.

That would be a serious blow for the state broadcasters if the state broadcasting commission followed this suggestion. In fact, this path meant a kind of disempowerment for the directors of the nine institutions. They could then, say Jäkel and de Weck, take much better care of their tasks as regional information providers – because that is the essence of ARD. The new ARD station will not be headed by an artistic director, but rather by a management team made up of managers. All supra-regional tasks and platforms as well as central administration should be controlled from here. The current structure, the argument went, made ARD “too slow and too cumbersome”. The Future Council also suggests such management for ZDF and Deutschlandradio. They are controlled by a media council (which replaces the previous broadcasting councils) and an administrative board.

Something else? The digital offerings such as media libraries and audio libraries from ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio are to be controlled by a joint subsidiary, which also means setting up a common technical platform (and not just an “interlocking” of offerings as was previously the case). The ZDF is likely to be more skeptical about this proposal than the ARD – the people of Mainz like their independence.

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A total of possible savings is not mentioned in the report, but in the medium to long term it is possible and likely to achieve savings depending on the type of implementation. Unlike Markus Söder, however, the Future Council does not believe that seven instead of nine state broadcasters or 58 instead of 72 radio stations actually make a big difference – the cost and efficiency driver they cite as the central driver is the need for excessive coordination and the resulting inefficiency.

Now a few fewer channels in the overcrowded offering would probably make an important contribution to reducing complexity. And a more radical reform such as the merger of ARD and ZDF is not being considered by the Future Council – the reason for this is the need for journalistic competition (which has actually increased significantly since ZDF was founded until today). Nevertheless, the approach manages to develop a certain elegance – at least on paper. The following conclusion is to the point: “The public broadcasters are currently stuck in a downward spiral: everything is happening in the usual structures, but a little less of everything – gradually less substance… That will destroy the system in the long term.”

Now it is up to the federal states to first read the report and then come to an agreement. What the paper attempts to do is to build bridges between critics and supporters – because even the biggest supporters of the public service cause cannot ignore the fact that the system has significant structural weaknesses that cannot be repaired in the medium term. Question to the Future Council: By when should these recommendations be implemented? Answer: “It’s urgent.”

* The other members of the Future Council include Mark D. Cole (Professor of Media and Telecommunications Law), Maria Exner (Journalist, Publix, House for Journalism & Publicity), Nadine Klass (Professor of Civil Law, Intellectual Property Law and Media Law) , Bettina Reitz (President of the University of Television and Film) and Annika Sehl (Professor of Journalism).