New order for ARD and ZDF: Culture out, Trallala in

In the night from Wednesday to Thursday, the broadcasting commission of the federal states also agreed on the last four still controversial points in the draft of the amended media state treaty for a reform of the mandate of public broadcasting.

The heads of government were finally able to approve the draft law.

Eureka!, it said immediately in the announcements.

But anyone who thinks that this clearly regulates what ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio are allowed to spend more than nine billion euros on annually is wrong.

This begins with the so-called "profile" of public service broadcasting.

The wording of the entertainment offer is as follows: “The public service offers must serve culture, education, information and advice.

Entertainment that corresponds to a public service profile is part of the contract.” This means that only entertainment programs that correspond to such a profile may be offered.

This is certainly a restriction on the previous wording in the media state treaty, according to which the entertainment “also” has to correspond to a public service profile.

In the explanatory text to the Twelfth Broadcasting Amendment State Treaty in 2009, the federal states had stated that a public service profile is characterized by the fact that it avoids trivialization and tabloidisation in the program.

However, in view of the new creative and technical possibilities, such a negative description is not sufficient to define public entertainment and to distinguish it from private providers.

In addition, the high proportion of entertainment formats on ARD and ZDF, which the federal states are not even beginning to contain, is rightly criticized.

The unclear concept of a public service profile

In the debate about the amendment to the mandate, one major change has received little attention.

The current state treaty states that the broadcasters should offer contributions on culture in particular.

This "special" cultural mandate of public service broadcasting is no longer emphasized.

This does not bode well for the reduced number of cultural programs and formats.

Instead, the telemedia mandate has been expanded: foreign feature films and series that have not previously been shown in the media library may in future be limited in time if they are contributions to education or culture and they “contribute to a particular extent to the public service profile”. , to be set.

There it is again – the unclear concept of a public profile.

Claus Grewenig, CEO of the private broadcaster association Vaunet, nevertheless welcomed “important restrictions in detail” in view of the controversial debate of recent years.

The fact that the order should in future be available in its entire breadth during the course of the day in the full programs and in the media libraries is just as important as the sharpening of entertainment and the limited opening of online evaluation options,

In addition to the already frequently described flexibilization of the program offer and the significantly reduced commissioning of linear offers, there are important changes, about which there has been no agreement so far, in paragraph 31, on the tasks of the radio and television councils.

In the future, the committees will monitor the "fulfillment of the mandate and economical and economical budgetary and economic management".

They should set up guidelines that include “content and formal quality standards and standardized processes for checking them”.

They should also set standards to “enable control of resource efficiency”.

The federal states are thus consistently pursuing the path of transferring their framework competence for public service broadcasting, which they are obliged to do according to the constitution and EU state aid law, to the broadcasters.

In the future, these and the committees will be primarily solely responsible for the ways in which content is distributed, whether it has a "public profile" and corresponds to "principles of economy and economy".

If the index model is introduced now, in the so-called second reform phase, which involves determining the broadcasting fee, the all-round carefree package would be perfect: the broadcasting fee increases almost automatically if the fee commission KEF subsequently checks it , without the approval of the state parliaments, and the broadcasters, without political backing,

After the prime ministers, it is now the turn of the state parliaments.

You must agree to the new contract.

This should be done by early next year.

Provided there is no objection to giving up media policy competence.