The public broadcasters asked for a summit on Monday.

They competed with their first team: on the left the ARD chairman Tom Buhrow, the ZDF director Thomas Bellut in the middle, on the right the SWR director Kai Gniffke and in the background the two digital directors Benjamin Fischer (ARD) and Eckart Gaddum (ZDF) .

They presented the “streaming network”, to which the broadcasters will immediately merge their media libraries and which they want to perfect in the next two years: anyone who selects one or the other media library can now find everything that is in the each other is stuck.

That is more than 250 ,00 program pieces.

The directors raved about it.

You create a “shared world of experience” and a “universal user experience,” said Tom Buhrow.

The “convincing”, added Thomas Bellut, “is that it is so easy for users”.

You stay in the selected media library, find your way around like a dream, and get “the best of the public service system”.

Two budgets for one appearance

The legal independence of the media libraries is retained, the various apps still exist.

To do this, ARD and ZDF add up the budgets of the media libraries, each amounting to a “mid-range” single-digit million amount, which adds up to a double-digit million amount that other media companies can only dream of.

The broadcasters develop the technology together, which means that they use algorithms to fine-tune the search function, the personalized access of the users and the recommendation system.

Like other streaming services, ARD and ZDF get to know their audience very well.

But they assure that their self-developed algorithm is "value-oriented", not "commercial".

From the station's point of view, this may be a “small revolution”, as Thomas Bellut said, or a “giant quantum leap”, as Tom Buhrow said, but the similarities quickly end again.

This is not a common platform, as it was called for in the debate on the reform of ARD and ZDF.

Definitely not a step towards merging the broadcasting groups.

When asked about it, ZDF director Bellut reacted quite energetically and brushed it aside with the astonishing remark that diversity only comes about through two public service groups and that otherwise there would be too much power and influence in one place.

The directors only talk about too much power and influence with regard to others - the American digital giants, which one wants to counter with the common network.

Public broadcasters do not have the press or private broadcasting on their bill.

When it comes to diversity, they only appear as marginal figures in the deliberations of public law.

There is a good deal of contempt and overconfidence behind this.

Whereby the public broadcasters, with their wide range of services paid for by everyone, make life difficult for the press.

And with the giants they supposedly want to counter, ARD and ZDF also get involved.

They deliver everything that is there on “third-party platforms” such as Google, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram.

Dealing with these platforms is on the “brand radar”, said ZDF director Bellut. Radical decisions, however, are not to be made. That means: ARD and ZDF join forces in the online wear and tear competition and make pacts with the digital giants as long as it seems opportune. It is obvious who falls by the wayside in this imaginary world of “diversity”.