Since one (of the sixteen) German states said 'no' on the TV tax increase (86 cents per household).....ARD (the public TV empire) has evaluated their position and two 'threats' are being constructed.
First, they are lawyering up and going to Constitutional Court....saying that they can't function without the 86 cent increase, and they want the court to agree....thus ordering the mechanism (the Bundestag and the sixteen states) to find a solution. Disconnecting the mechanism to say only a majority of states need to agree, thus forcing the rest to accept the deal? It's probably only way that the court could create out of thin air.
Ethical? The law....down on the books for several decades....would be a problem for the court to get over. The court might look at this and ask ARD why they can't cut something (that'd be a shocker for ARD management).
This requiring an entire year to evaluate? That's another part of the story. German courts rarely make quick judgements.
The second threat? They might go and start to eliminate or cut on things....to make a threat.
The possibility that the NEO network would go away? NEO was designed (at least originally in 2009) to be the alternate network for not-so-old Germans (meaning 18-to-45 years old) to flip over to and find 'more fun' entertainment.
On appeal to the public....most Germans would laugh and indicate that they watch fewer than ten hours a year of the network.
What NEO offers? Mostly US/Brit comedy and drama series (from the 1990s to the past decade). For four years, they ran Magnum P I. Hart to Hart (from the 1990s) has been on. Ray Donavon has been a popular series on it.
If you were looking at numbers....the first five years were absolutely lousy for them. Since the summer of 2016, they have bumped up two notches (somewhere between two and three percent of the population watching). I think this is more due to better picks on series (Fargo and Star Trek are now on).
ARD could go and cut back on TV movies being made, and just increase the number of game shows for prime-time.
The key point though....they need to show without the lousy 86 cents per household....they will simply produce less quality.
The fact that streaming TV (Amazon, Netflix, etc) is having a serious competition situation on public TV? I would imagine around my region....for Christmas...a number of twelve-year old kids are asking for a year's subscription to one of the digital networks as a Christmas present. ARD can't present an attractive choice for this 12-to-18 age group.
Settle back for an entertaining tax discussion.
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