The decision of the Federal Constitutional Court on July 20th of last year reaffirmed a principle that also applies to public service broadcasting: "The money follows the task".
This means that, in principle, there is no task management with a golden rein for independent public-law entities. To put it bluntly: In Saxony-Anhalt, the intention was to "slaughter the wrong pig" with the unapproved increase in the license fee to control the public service program offerings, because the states are by no means powerless, they are not at the mercy of the broadcasters' financial claims. They only have to use the creative freedom where it exists, namely in the normative creation of public tasks, which they entrust the broadcasters with. If the resulting financial requirements for the contributors appear too high, the responsible parliaments must reduce the tasks they have assigned themselves.The honorary bodies of the broadcasters have not yet had any relevant function. What is obvious in the constitutional system as a therapy and seems simple, the parliaments shun in reality like the devil shuns holy water.
Passing on the buck
The draft discussion by the Broadcasting Commission on the task and structural optimization of public service broadcasting - on which you can still make entries with the state government of Rhineland-Palatinate (rlp.de) until January 14th - takes the right objects into view, but leaves the However, they lack the courage to make structural adjustments while maintaining clear responsibilities and are trying to play a structure-blurring “bucking game” at the expense of the broadcasters and their bodies, which means that previous responsibility structures are unclear.
If the federal states specify the public mandate in the media state treaty, if they reduce the number of broadcasters or television programs and telemedia offers, this automatically has consequences for the financial requirements without the need to change the broadcasting financing state treaty.
Only what corresponds to the public mandate can be included in the financial needs of the broadcasters.
The planned conversion of the terms education, information, advice, entertainment and culture without the planned reduction or expansion does not lead to improvements, since culture has already been increased in value with a "particularly" and entertainment has rightly been fundamentally based on a public service profile has been focused.
The following television programs are currently to be broadcast: The first and the second German television as well as 3sat and Arte as full programs, the additional programs tagesschau 24, EinsFestival, ARD-alpha, ZDFinfo and ZDFneo, in accordance with state law the nine third television programs as well as Phoenix and KiKa. In quantitative terms, that is undeniably a lot, also confusing and indeed “too much the same”. Here one had to expect proposals from the Broadcasting Commission for optimizing the structure. The potential for savings is great, but the federal states must leverage it, but not through the hope that broadcasters will limit their program offerings themselves. However, the countries shy away from such a measure, such as the horse ridden by Annika Schleu in the modern pentathlon at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in front of the obstacles.