This brought up in Focus today in Germany, and it's a long-winded piece which discusses this odd objective of public TV (ARD/ZDF) in Germany.
The two major public TV networks are hooked to a national 'media-tax' which you really can't avoid if you are a German. Roughly 18 Euro a month per house.
So, it's been brought up that both public networks are working up a new strategy to expand out onto the internet and produce their journalism there as well. Naturally, the newspapers and commercial TV news people are peeved and raising a fuss over this idea.
When laid out over a number of years....it's eight billion that they intend to spend. Why so much concentrated 'power' by public TV news? The newspapers aren't buying into the strategy and say this has crossed the line.
The necessity for this? Well....when you step back and look at viewership numbers....it's a negative situation with younger viewers. The 15-to-25 year old group aren't watching public TV....not the entertainment side....not the sports side....and not the news side. There is this perception by a fair number of the younger German population that public TV isn't worth watching.
If the public TV news people can't get their 'message' to a fair number of Germans now....what happens in ten to fifteen years? Imagine that only 25-million Germans view nightly German news by 2030.
My suspicion is that this is the only way to preserve some 'slant' on the news and keep people focused on the topics that intellectuals want prioritized. The odds of this working? If they aren't watching their news on TV.....why would they cross the line and view their news stories via the internet? It's eight billion Euro down the drain if you ask me.
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