The Cost of TV Discussion

 If you pick up a copy of WELT (the newspaper) this AM....there is this one interesting commentary written by Gitta Connermann, with the topic: 'Fee payers should know where every penny goes'.  This refers to public TV, the ongoing scandal with RBB, and the firing of the RBB 'boss'.

So, she makes the case that every Euro spent...ought to be in a open file, and the public would be allowed to view it.  

Adding to this....she does state the general fact....German public TV is now one of the most expensive national TV medias existing on the face of the Earth.  

How far this would go?  Unknown.

I sat and pondered upon this.  Every Sunday evening at 8:15....a episode of Tatort comes on.  It's a murder-detective show.  There's probably fifteen different cities around Germany used, and some of the stories are simple....while some are very complicated.  

It's obvious that some of the Tatorts are done on the cheap end of things (like the Saarbrucken shows)....while the Munich shows might be a bit costly.  Would you want a slide at the end of each show....to say this 90-minute episode cost around 800,000 Euro to produce, and the next week....say this 90-minute episode had a cost factor of 1.2-million?

Would you want a radio message to say for the past hour of HR3 radio...the cost factor was 1,800 Euro....while the Bremen public radio hour had a cost of 700 Euro?

Would you want some 90-minute Bavarian love story play out and find out at the end that well over 2-million Euro was spent....while you discovered the next night that some Rostock love story played out, and their cost was 1.1-million?  

If you ask me....this is opening up a can of worms, and a lot of people will start to ask stupid questions over why crappy shows are sponsored at outrageous rates.  

Then you turn to the KiKA-Channel....German kids channel, and you discover that X-show was done for 25,000 Euro (for 30 minutes), while Y-show was done for 1,200 Euro for 30 minutes.  

Maybe Connermann is correct in this analysis, but the ARD/ZDF management folks are shaking in their boots.....realizing the public might figure out half the stuff they produce is over-priced.