display
Dear Kai Gniffke, for many years you were the “first editor-in-chief” of ARD-aktuell, the editorial team of the “Tagesschau”.
In this role, you would often explain in your internet blog why your editorial team did or didn't do this.
The “Tagesschau” sometimes seemed like a bulwark in your blog posts that had to be preserved in its tried and tested form.
For more than a year now you have been the director of Südwestrundfunk (SWR), the second largest broadcasting station on ARD after WDR.
You have just given an interview to the media branch service DWDL, which surprised me in view of the usual interviews with directors, which ultimately often revolve around what is not possible in public service broadcasting.
It is time to “think things that were previously unimaginable”, you said, dear Mr. Gniffke.
Which of course sets the bar high.
Unimaginable things from a radio set, in which the merging of IT structures is already considered a coup, makes you sit up and take notice.
display
Specifically, you propose to create "cross-broadcaster structures" together with the Saarland Broadcasting Corporation (SR).
Above all, joint directorates, for example in production and administration, joint advertising marketing, accounting, bookkeeping - right up to the “wiser utilization of existing resources”.
Yes, that all sounds very reasonable, what you have suggested, even if the ideas do not seem so “unimaginable” to me.
And yet this advance was already too much for your colleague Thomas Kleist from the SR, who will soon quit as director, but "decided" to be on the safe side and spoke out against your request.
And the Saarland politics seconded a little later in the form of the head of the State Chancellery, the proposal was "not very successful and collegial".
Well, if you are initially denounced as unfriendly, and that by someone who is not a colleague at all, then it is clear that a constructive proposal should be nipped in the bud by devaluing the person making the proposal.
display
Your critics, dear Mr. Gniffke, obviously cannot or do not want to understand that your proposal, which is ultimately still moderate, is an attempt to reform public service broadcasting on its own.
Personally, I don't believe that this can succeed - and the reflexive resistance from the Saarland proves it. But your insight into taking the reins into your own hands instead of waiting for a reform proposal from politics speaks for you.
A major reform of broadcasting can only be resolved by the federal states - but it is smart to offer them something now.
Those who offer little or nothing could end up doing even worse.
Even now, Saarland broadcasting (like Radio Bremen) can hardly survive on its own without the financial compensation that is transferred from the other ARD broadcasters.
But if nobody wants to do without, then the savings are on the agenda.
Many directors are threatening this.
ARD and also ZDF let their anger out on the viewers about the canceled contribution increase.
The audience becomes your hostage, so your colleagues wanted to blackmail the politicians: If you don't give us the money, then we will simply cancel our stuff.
Here you can listen to our WELT podcasts
We use the player from the provider Podigee for our WELT podcasts.
We need your consent so that you can see the podcast player and to interact with or display content from Podigee and other social networks.
Activate social networks
I consent to content from social networks being displayed to me.
This allows personal data to be transmitted to third party providers.
This may require the storage of cookies on your device.
More information can be found here.
display
But you, Mr Gniffke, probably know as well as your more reform-resistant colleagues that the audience is not the hostage of ARD and ZDF.
People can move around freely in the media universe.
You don't need it, not for crime thrillers, not for documentaries, not even for breaking news like the other day with the assault on the Capitol.
You know that, and I suspect that is one of the reasons why you proposed something that, although it doesn’t knock my socks off, is a sensible start to a structural debate.
If voices like yours are wiped out as dishonest, then the vested interests will soon be the losers.
Then what you said in the interview will happen: “But if we all act according to the premise 'How do I make my life the easiest?', Then we will experience an order and structure debate that will fly around our ears. "
All the best, your Christian Meier
This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG. We will be happy to deliver them to your home on a regular basis.
Source: WELT AM SONNTAG