Around Midnight every Saturday night, for roughly four to five minutes.....some German priest or minister comes on the air of ARD (German public TV, Channel One) to give a religious 'pep-talk'. It's a traditional thing and it rotates round, so it's never repeated with the individual. The show is Wort zum Sonntag.
Focus brings up this topic via a short article this morning. Apparently the show for last Saturday evening got a whole bunch of folks pepped-up and a bunch of folks riled-up.
The minister in question launched into a condemnation of the EU for not resolving the migration crisis in Greece. It wasn't one of those gentle or flexible condemnation situations like you'd expect....it was a full-scale 'blast'.
So you have one group who is excited by this and in full agreement that the EU is screwing up (oddly, the one group is obviously pro-EU anyway). Then you have the AfD Party folks are furious about engagement, and think that a public TV network cannot allow this type of theme or message to occur.
Over an average year, I might 'accidentally' view Wort zum Sonntag maybe five times. I'm not that thrilled over ARD's offerings on Saturday evenings to start with....preferring commercial German TV.
I would take a guess that fewer than one-quarter of one-percent of Germans (83-million) probably watch the four to five minute 'lecture'. I am surprised that the network hasn't been pushed to allow in a Muslim instructor to offer a 'lecture' (it's strictly between the Lutherans and Catholics at this point.
Will all of this chatter create turmoil against the ARD management folks? Maybe. They can't really dump the segment because it's been on for over fifty years. Nor can they really micromanage this to prevent this type of condemnation to occur again. If anything....it'll be a marker on the board for downsizing public TV, and making it totally non-religious.
No comments:
Post a Comment