More TV/Radio Chatter

 In the past month, I've essayed a bit over the German TV tax and where things are stalled.  So, more to the story.

Things were going along a certain path where the tax would go from 17.50 Euro a month per house.....to 18.36 Euro a month per house.  Everything was set up for the next five years....for another 1.5 billion Euro to be in the pot of the public TV/radio managers.  Then the last piece came along....all sixteen states had to agree to this.  Saxony-Anhalt said no, and that pretty much blocked the whole thing.

Now?  The public TV crowd has gone to lawyers, and figures to sue enough to get the Constitutional Court to order a change to the law.  What they might do?  Probably one of two things.....say that a majority of the 16 states need only agree to this (requiring a change in the Constitution and a full year to accomplish), or say it's written in stone....so don't waste time suing the federal government. 

This morning, via Focus, there's a piece updating the story, with the Premier-President of Saxony-Anhalt (Haseloff-CDU) discussing the matter.  He makes an interesting point.

Haseloff looks squarely at the ARD/ZDF TV empire and says that they haven't advanced much at all since unification, and have little to no understanding of eastern Germany.

He even makes the comment at some point of suggesting that when something is reported out of eastern Germany.....it's almost done as a foreign report (like reporting on Czech or Greece, in my humble words).  Over the past five years, there's numerous occasions when I've seen this type of reporting and felt amused that eastern Germany is treated like some brat-kid by the public TV journalists.

Over the past week, if you observe political chatter, there's some thoughts by people that it's time to drag public TV/radio into a room and privatize them to a great extent.  Making this a 2021 political topic?  That's probably the greatest fear by the public TV/radio people.

Among the 18-to-30 year old range....I would take a guess that near 50-percent of them are fed up with the TV/radio tax, and get little out of the ARD/ZDF/public radio situation.  The hints over the past decade to reorganize and slim-down?  Most people would suggest that they've seen no change at all.

The odds that the court will go with the idea of laying the 'stones' to benefit public TV/radio?  I'd give it a 80-percent chance.  But if the election of 2021 is aimed at tearing down the public TV/radio 'empire'....that's probably going to shift massive weight on public appeal against the TV tax.