I had to sit last night and watch some German journalist make a fool out of himself as they did a US story on the wildfire episodes out near the Napa Valley area of California, and the connection of climate change to the wildfire. It was a bit amusing to see his eyebrows do the upward slant, and he really wanted you to believe him.
The problem with this story is that this is wine territory.....which means that it gets a limited amount of rainfall on average anyway. Historically, the Napa region averages around 25 to 30 inches per year....which this spread out over 70-odd days a year. Most people will tell that the bulk of this....probably 75-percent....occurs in the fall or winter. While you might view the numbers and think that it rains once every five days, with a third-to-a-half inch of rain...it really rains every three days in November to March, and then barely rains the remaining seven months.
If you go and talk to anyone who lives around the Napa Valley, they will tell you that there is a fairly long and drawn out dry season which arrives each year around the spring, and runs through to fall (typically ending in October). Come November to March? The bulk of this 25 to 30 inches occur.
In this particular year, an added feature occurred....a high pressure system anchored itself down on the eastern side of California. This triggered up winds to blow from east to west....for an extended period. Those winds that came from the east? Well....they came over the mountains, into the valley, and bought warm dry air, which makes a low-rainfall situation a bit worse.
Then you add the cherry to this cake....intense building of houses and suburbs throughout the Napa Valley right next to wooded areas. So when the fire process started, the homes lay right in the path and burned to the ground. If you went back fifty years ago? Most of those suburbs would not have existed. It's part of the urbanization problem of California and what went unchecked for decades.
But the intellectual journalist for ZDF wouldn't care....he's focused on one single issue and unable to grasp much beyond that.
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Berlin Story
Focus wrote up a fine piece today on Berlin today.
It's a fact-driven news piece which talks about the amount of crime going on in Berlin. If you follow recent headlines around the city....some sixty-year-old art historian gal was found dead with a guy-friend of hers....near the Berlin Tiergarten area. The accused? Some Russian kid (18 years old).
The Focus piece goes into detail then about an increase in aggressive behavior seen around the city, illicit drug sales up, and very noticeable uptrend in hookers (mostly east European). All of this circles around 'camps' which have popped up in various parks in the city now. These used to be mostly just German homeless people.....now? It's a wide array of nationalities.
Focus even notes that the bulk of the alcohol and drug users are mostly from eastern Europe.
At some point in the article....there's an interesting statistic shown....roughly 568,000 criminal cases were noted by the cops in 2016. For most Berlin residents....it's now to the point of requiring the city authorities to do something....but no one is really sure how to handle this. If you went out to round up people....then what? Would you actually deport people? It's doubtful. Would you toss the alcoholics into some rehab program and force them to move to rural areas, or leave the city?
It's a fact-driven news piece which talks about the amount of crime going on in Berlin. If you follow recent headlines around the city....some sixty-year-old art historian gal was found dead with a guy-friend of hers....near the Berlin Tiergarten area. The accused? Some Russian kid (18 years old).
The Focus piece goes into detail then about an increase in aggressive behavior seen around the city, illicit drug sales up, and very noticeable uptrend in hookers (mostly east European). All of this circles around 'camps' which have popped up in various parks in the city now. These used to be mostly just German homeless people.....now? It's a wide array of nationalities.
Focus even notes that the bulk of the alcohol and drug users are mostly from eastern Europe.
At some point in the article....there's an interesting statistic shown....roughly 568,000 criminal cases were noted by the cops in 2016. For most Berlin residents....it's now to the point of requiring the city authorities to do something....but no one is really sure how to handle this. If you went out to round up people....then what? Would you actually deport people? It's doubtful. Would you toss the alcoholics into some rehab program and force them to move to rural areas, or leave the city?
The Registration Story
My son (a German) brought up this story last night.
For those who aren't aware of the German law....there is this rule that when you move (from city to city)....within a month after making the move, you need to register yourself at the new city-hall. You give them your address, and your new phone number.
So, he's got some young guy (roughly 23 years old), who works in the building with him. Note in this story that there are a lot of young people in the building (probably 50-percent are between 18 and 28 years old).
This guy made a move from a town to Mainz about nine months ago. Fairly significant move.....over 70 miles. The thing is....he never went to register himself.
At some point (actually multiple points), probably even going back to the past 11 months....he was blitz-camera-caught. That means he was speeding and some camera caught the action. The cops got the film....noted his speed and mailed him a ticket in the mail....to the OLD address. He never saw it....never responded.
Well....last month, this guy accidentally bumped some person in a grocery parking lot, doing a small bit of damage. He didn't feel the bump....didn't stop, and just drove on out. We can argue over this part of the story. It might not be totally innocent. But someone saw his tag and the cops got called.
So the cops ended up doing research and figured out who he was and where he lived. They came....taking his license for thirty days (serious things like leaving a car accident is such).
After the 30 days....he came down to pick up the license. Well....no, says the cops. They've done more research and pulled out several speeding tickets from this 'mystery' period. So they've said now that they are holding his license for nine months. I was kinda blown away.....nine months is a hefty period that you can't drive.
I asked.....how could this kid be that stupid not to register? Well....my son points out all these things in life that school doesn't cover. He threw out twenty-odd things which just never get mentioned. Here you had some captive audience for years and years....and these sort of little laws never got mentioned. In my son's case, there's a vast amount of information that just never got mentioned and he was simply lucky that my wife harped on these or mentioned these on a continual basis.
So I looked at this and asked about this guy and his car. Nine months with the car sitting in some parking lot? Well....no. The guy had already found someone who desperately needed a vehicle for a couple of months, and was willing to pay 200 Euro a month 'rental' fee. It sounds like crazy, but yeah....he's covering his insurance and general cost....by renting this out.
Then my son brings up this odd factor in the building. Out of forty-odd people in the business....at least five of them don't have a license (never took the course or passed the exam). These are people who either ride a bike over or take the city-bus. Again, it's an odd statistic because twenty years ago, it would have been near zero.
So I bring up this last question with the son. Are there more people like this guy in the business....who don't know about the registration requirement? He just grinned....he thought at least five other people in the business also are living in new apartments, and never registered themselves.
For those who aren't aware of the German law....there is this rule that when you move (from city to city)....within a month after making the move, you need to register yourself at the new city-hall. You give them your address, and your new phone number.
So, he's got some young guy (roughly 23 years old), who works in the building with him. Note in this story that there are a lot of young people in the building (probably 50-percent are between 18 and 28 years old).
This guy made a move from a town to Mainz about nine months ago. Fairly significant move.....over 70 miles. The thing is....he never went to register himself.
At some point (actually multiple points), probably even going back to the past 11 months....he was blitz-camera-caught. That means he was speeding and some camera caught the action. The cops got the film....noted his speed and mailed him a ticket in the mail....to the OLD address. He never saw it....never responded.
Well....last month, this guy accidentally bumped some person in a grocery parking lot, doing a small bit of damage. He didn't feel the bump....didn't stop, and just drove on out. We can argue over this part of the story. It might not be totally innocent. But someone saw his tag and the cops got called.
So the cops ended up doing research and figured out who he was and where he lived. They came....taking his license for thirty days (serious things like leaving a car accident is such).
After the 30 days....he came down to pick up the license. Well....no, says the cops. They've done more research and pulled out several speeding tickets from this 'mystery' period. So they've said now that they are holding his license for nine months. I was kinda blown away.....nine months is a hefty period that you can't drive.
I asked.....how could this kid be that stupid not to register? Well....my son points out all these things in life that school doesn't cover. He threw out twenty-odd things which just never get mentioned. Here you had some captive audience for years and years....and these sort of little laws never got mentioned. In my son's case, there's a vast amount of information that just never got mentioned and he was simply lucky that my wife harped on these or mentioned these on a continual basis.
So I looked at this and asked about this guy and his car. Nine months with the car sitting in some parking lot? Well....no. The guy had already found someone who desperately needed a vehicle for a couple of months, and was willing to pay 200 Euro a month 'rental' fee. It sounds like crazy, but yeah....he's covering his insurance and general cost....by renting this out.
Then my son brings up this odd factor in the building. Out of forty-odd people in the business....at least five of them don't have a license (never took the course or passed the exam). These are people who either ride a bike over or take the city-bus. Again, it's an odd statistic because twenty years ago, it would have been near zero.
So I bring up this last question with the son. Are there more people like this guy in the business....who don't know about the registration requirement? He just grinned....he thought at least five other people in the business also are living in new apartments, and never registered themselves.
Monday, October 9, 2017
The Moderator Story
On 09 October 2017 at 18:11 by moderation
Temporary closure of the commentary function
Dear users, due to the high number of comments on meta.tagesschau.de, the news can not be commented at the moment. We ask for your understanding.
Sincerely, The Moderation
It's an amusing piece by German public TV (ARD). So what they wanted to cover was the topic of the US election affected by the evil-Russians....this time using Google.
The angle here was announcing that roughly 3,000 ad's appeared on Google News, displaying fake news and thereby helping to defeat Hillary Clinton.
Generally, the ARD crew were very careful when they told the Facebook news from roughly ten days ago.....leaving approximately half of the Facebook and Russian story out (roughly $100,000 of ad's and centered on two communities in the US only....Baltimore and Ferguson).
The amusing thing is that fifteen Germans roughly....got 'in' and posted commentary to the story before they killed off the commentary (as you see above). Yes, the majority of the Germans who did comment....'thumped' ARD because it's a mostly bogus story. The rating given to the story? Potentially up to five stars? ONE star...was the average.
The moderator crew has to react pretty fast to kill off criticism on the intellectual staff at ARD.
The effort to tell the Russian story to the general German public? I think up until April/May of this year....it kinda worked but then people started to ask questions....stupid questions. And the smart news geeks of the German public TV crowd (both ZDF an ARD) kept trying to tell the story and you'd see people more amused than interested.
In this episode....someone even went to ask in a cynical fashion....could the entire US election have been taken down by 3,000 ads on Google News? Well....yeah, ARD doesn't really want to respond to that because if you pretend it's true.....it just makes everyone critical of the amount of stupidity involved on the intellectual side of telling this story.
Weekend German Political Chat
Over the weekend, Merkel's CDU Party and Seehofer's CSU Party have met and ironed out the way ahead for the two. Merkel's team was forced to agree in some form to a limit in refugees per year of 200,000. What is said by various news sources is that this will make the coalition idea with the FDP and Greens more difficult. They aren't saying 'impossible' but major concessions by the Greens will be demanded to agree along with the 200,000 number.
The rest of the agreement?
Well....they talked over refugee centers in Germany. There will be an understanding for the future that once you arrive in the country....you will remain in these "decision-making centers", until your application has been processed and determined. Back in 2013 and early 2014....they could still make a decision in roughly six to twelve weeks (if your passport existed and was valid). At some point in late 2015, the process was up to around nine months. You could be sitting in this temporary center for a fairly long time.
If you fail? I'm guessing that they would walk you from the "decision-making center" to the local airport and send you back.
They also brought up countries of origin. Currently, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are on the safe country list, so that means easy transfer back to the home-country....should you fail the visa process. I suspect that the Greens will not be that agreeable on this situation.
Border control? They agreed that the current situation will continue on until the EU's external border system is working. Don't expect this to occur for years.
On Family immigration? They worded this in a way that if you are on a government subsidiary program.....you won't be able to bring family members in. This forces the guy to get a job and show the ability to produce an income.
If you had to rank these agreements with the chance of a coalition with the Greens....I'd say there's some big issues to be ironed out and this coalition government might not occur.
The rest of the agreement?
Well....they talked over refugee centers in Germany. There will be an understanding for the future that once you arrive in the country....you will remain in these "decision-making centers", until your application has been processed and determined. Back in 2013 and early 2014....they could still make a decision in roughly six to twelve weeks (if your passport existed and was valid). At some point in late 2015, the process was up to around nine months. You could be sitting in this temporary center for a fairly long time.
If you fail? I'm guessing that they would walk you from the "decision-making center" to the local airport and send you back.
They also brought up countries of origin. Currently, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are on the safe country list, so that means easy transfer back to the home-country....should you fail the visa process. I suspect that the Greens will not be that agreeable on this situation.
Border control? They agreed that the current situation will continue on until the EU's external border system is working. Don't expect this to occur for years.
On Family immigration? They worded this in a way that if you are on a government subsidiary program.....you won't be able to bring family members in. This forces the guy to get a job and show the ability to produce an income.
If you had to rank these agreements with the chance of a coalition with the Greens....I'd say there's some big issues to be ironed out and this coalition government might not occur.
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Explaining Gun Control and the Associated Problems to a German
Some people will say that there are 500 pages of material to discuss American gun control or to argue against it. Germans tend to get hyped-up on the topic because of the type of discussion led by German public-TV and the journalists associated with it. So my explanation is geared toward that German, and to make them understand how this topic is built. There are basically four pieces to the discussion.
1. For whatever reason you might ponder upon, the original construction team of the American Constitution wrote in a piece of plain script that says Americans will have the right to keep and bear firearms. It also states that a well regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state. That's it. It's not very wordy, and it really has a thousand interpretations over what it might mean in 2017.
In 1791, it was supposed to mean that no government entity could come upon a community and confiscate the weapons of local citizens....something that the British Army did in the Revolutionary War period.
For the next hundred-and-fifty years....there was no real challenge to the two-line piece in the Constitution. I know....it's amazing that no one saw a reason to challenge it.
Then you get into the period of 1910 to present, and technology development brought this two-line piece of the Constitution into the challenge period.
Out of World War I....the machine gun and automatic weapons were developed. Some federal laws were developed to keep machine guns out of the general public. Criminals in the 1930s? They procured the machine guns anyway.
After WW II....more technology developments occurred, and various weapons....like the M-1 Carbine came to the general public.
After Vietnam....there was interest in a civilian version of the M-16 (AR-15)....which came in the form of a semi-automatic.
Over the past twenty-five years, technology has continued to make this a difficult subject politicians. Even the subject of silencers comes up now.
In another twenty years? That's the curious thing. Laser weapons are not that far off, and lightning-bolt type weapons aren't that crazy anymore. You could ban guns and find that the mad scientist folks quietly inventing sonic-type weapons which are just as big of a threat.
2. There are five basic groups in this gun-control discussion: (a) the no-guns-period group, which wants a total and absolute ban. (b) The hunter-farmer crowd which wants shotguns and hunting rifles readily accepted and won't go along with a total ban. (c) The urban dweller in Memphis, Atlanta, Dallas, etc....who has a pistol in the car and the house, and wants to protect himself because the cops can't do the job. (d) The Constitutional crowd who thinks the weapons are the only way to ensure the government does not go beyond it's boundary and impose an iron-fist upon society. (e) The fix-it-someway crowd who believes that you can write a script to this problem, with three or four things changed or banned, and the mass murders/shootings go away.
Typically with the last group, the reality that you have federal and state laws on the books to forbid murder or shooting people....doesn't really figure into the mix of laws that are on the books and have no real affect. They assume more laws would fix things. This is also the group that probably thought in the 1910 to 1920 era that prohibiting alcohol sales in America would fix everything. A dozen years after 1920....they agreed their Constitutional rule didn't fix much of anything, and undid it.
The five groups are at the heart and soul of this entire argument.
3. The cities which have made local legislation and developed tougher regulation? Well...the general facts state that the tougher regulation had almost no real effect. There were people applauded for their legislation and effort but generally...these localized efforts were simply 'eye-candy'. You can go to Washington DC, Baltimore, and Chicago to find legislation didn't help much.
4. So then you address the German, and ask about the German method. There really isn't any serious gun-control in Germany. Any citizen can have a weapon....if they go and apply for a 'license'. There are five or six stumbling blocks, and I would personally make the estimation that around 10-to-15 percent of German society would be unable to get a weapon license. If you applied the same stumbling blocks in American society? I'd take a guess that roughly 10-to-15 percent of Americans would not be able to procure or own a gun. But to reach that point, you'd have to rewrite the Constitution with a six-to-eight line piece, delete any mention of a well-armed militia, and put people with heavy medication or drug usage into a tight spot that they'd be denied the right/license.
You could poll a combined group of working-class Republicans and Democrats, and find that the bulk simply wouldn't agree to that type of legislation or Constitutional rewrite.
So there you go. If a German went off to Memphis and spent a month walking around there....by the end of the period, if you suggested he'd be there for the rest of his life....he'd likely go and buy a gun for his house and car. It's the simple reality of the landscape that you live around.
1. For whatever reason you might ponder upon, the original construction team of the American Constitution wrote in a piece of plain script that says Americans will have the right to keep and bear firearms. It also states that a well regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state. That's it. It's not very wordy, and it really has a thousand interpretations over what it might mean in 2017.
In 1791, it was supposed to mean that no government entity could come upon a community and confiscate the weapons of local citizens....something that the British Army did in the Revolutionary War period.
For the next hundred-and-fifty years....there was no real challenge to the two-line piece in the Constitution. I know....it's amazing that no one saw a reason to challenge it.
Then you get into the period of 1910 to present, and technology development brought this two-line piece of the Constitution into the challenge period.
Out of World War I....the machine gun and automatic weapons were developed. Some federal laws were developed to keep machine guns out of the general public. Criminals in the 1930s? They procured the machine guns anyway.
After WW II....more technology developments occurred, and various weapons....like the M-1 Carbine came to the general public.
After Vietnam....there was interest in a civilian version of the M-16 (AR-15)....which came in the form of a semi-automatic.
Over the past twenty-five years, technology has continued to make this a difficult subject politicians. Even the subject of silencers comes up now.
In another twenty years? That's the curious thing. Laser weapons are not that far off, and lightning-bolt type weapons aren't that crazy anymore. You could ban guns and find that the mad scientist folks quietly inventing sonic-type weapons which are just as big of a threat.
2. There are five basic groups in this gun-control discussion: (a) the no-guns-period group, which wants a total and absolute ban. (b) The hunter-farmer crowd which wants shotguns and hunting rifles readily accepted and won't go along with a total ban. (c) The urban dweller in Memphis, Atlanta, Dallas, etc....who has a pistol in the car and the house, and wants to protect himself because the cops can't do the job. (d) The Constitutional crowd who thinks the weapons are the only way to ensure the government does not go beyond it's boundary and impose an iron-fist upon society. (e) The fix-it-someway crowd who believes that you can write a script to this problem, with three or four things changed or banned, and the mass murders/shootings go away.
Typically with the last group, the reality that you have federal and state laws on the books to forbid murder or shooting people....doesn't really figure into the mix of laws that are on the books and have no real affect. They assume more laws would fix things. This is also the group that probably thought in the 1910 to 1920 era that prohibiting alcohol sales in America would fix everything. A dozen years after 1920....they agreed their Constitutional rule didn't fix much of anything, and undid it.
The five groups are at the heart and soul of this entire argument.
3. The cities which have made local legislation and developed tougher regulation? Well...the general facts state that the tougher regulation had almost no real effect. There were people applauded for their legislation and effort but generally...these localized efforts were simply 'eye-candy'. You can go to Washington DC, Baltimore, and Chicago to find legislation didn't help much.
4. So then you address the German, and ask about the German method. There really isn't any serious gun-control in Germany. Any citizen can have a weapon....if they go and apply for a 'license'. There are five or six stumbling blocks, and I would personally make the estimation that around 10-to-15 percent of German society would be unable to get a weapon license. If you applied the same stumbling blocks in American society? I'd take a guess that roughly 10-to-15 percent of Americans would not be able to procure or own a gun. But to reach that point, you'd have to rewrite the Constitution with a six-to-eight line piece, delete any mention of a well-armed militia, and put people with heavy medication or drug usage into a tight spot that they'd be denied the right/license.
You could poll a combined group of working-class Republicans and Democrats, and find that the bulk simply wouldn't agree to that type of legislation or Constitutional rewrite.
So there you go. If a German went off to Memphis and spent a month walking around there....by the end of the period, if you suggested he'd be there for the rest of his life....he'd likely go and buy a gun for his house and car. It's the simple reality of the landscape that you live around.
You Might Be a Fake-Father Story
About three or four months ago, this topic came up and at the time....I felt like that it'd turn out to be mostly fake news. Time has passed, and most of what was said....seems to be proven true.
The basic story? The Berlin leadership says there is a new trend developing....called the 'fake-father' situation. A pregnant foreign gal (non-German, and non-EU) will come up and have cash. They will hire a German guy to say that the child (yet unborn) is their child. Amount discussed? It ranges from 5,000 to 10,000 Euro. Once the child is born, the father signs the paperwork, and the kid is 'given' (there should be a better term but there isn't) German citizenship. Because the kid has German citizenship, the mother now applies for residency and receives the visa. Marriage required? No.
You can stand and admire the simplicity of this. Cash in hand....no one seeming to patrol the front door.
How many occur? The authorities think it's near 5,000 a year, but they admit....it might be double or triple...only because there's no one really looking at the problem.
Added to this whole story is that if the father is near social welfare (Hartz IV).....well, he doesn't have to pay child support and the government gets stuck having to cover that cost.
One case got brought up by Deutsche Welle....of a Berlin guy who'd fathered off a minimum of ten kids via this method.
Fixing this? Well....you'd have to mandate a DNA test, and the pro-asylum folks say that would be unfair because if you stop this method....the kid born (probably in Germany) would then be without a nation, and couldn't get a visa or passport....from any country except the mother's home-country.
Odds of a crafted law to fix this? They might go and write some law that says if you accept money for a fake-father situation....you'd get a hefty tax (like 75-percent), but that'd just pump up the asking rate for the women in this situation. Beyond that, I don't see anyone in the Bundestag wanting to grab onto this and try to write some repair law (it'd get you dragged in front of cameras and being accused of being anti-child).
In my imagination, I can just see this German dude on welfare, sitting at some pub and working up the deal for 7,000 Euro to be a fake-father, and doing this four times a year....thus making this his full-time job. Twenty years from now....the ARD news-people will stumble upon Johan (who hasn't worked in twenty years) but collected 28,000 Euro a year (non-taxable income), and fathered eighty kids. Someone will make a movie over it and Germans will just shake their heads in disbelief how it was quietly all accepted by the authorities.
The basic story? The Berlin leadership says there is a new trend developing....called the 'fake-father' situation. A pregnant foreign gal (non-German, and non-EU) will come up and have cash. They will hire a German guy to say that the child (yet unborn) is their child. Amount discussed? It ranges from 5,000 to 10,000 Euro. Once the child is born, the father signs the paperwork, and the kid is 'given' (there should be a better term but there isn't) German citizenship. Because the kid has German citizenship, the mother now applies for residency and receives the visa. Marriage required? No.
You can stand and admire the simplicity of this. Cash in hand....no one seeming to patrol the front door.
How many occur? The authorities think it's near 5,000 a year, but they admit....it might be double or triple...only because there's no one really looking at the problem.
Added to this whole story is that if the father is near social welfare (Hartz IV).....well, he doesn't have to pay child support and the government gets stuck having to cover that cost.
One case got brought up by Deutsche Welle....of a Berlin guy who'd fathered off a minimum of ten kids via this method.
Fixing this? Well....you'd have to mandate a DNA test, and the pro-asylum folks say that would be unfair because if you stop this method....the kid born (probably in Germany) would then be without a nation, and couldn't get a visa or passport....from any country except the mother's home-country.
Odds of a crafted law to fix this? They might go and write some law that says if you accept money for a fake-father situation....you'd get a hefty tax (like 75-percent), but that'd just pump up the asking rate for the women in this situation. Beyond that, I don't see anyone in the Bundestag wanting to grab onto this and try to write some repair law (it'd get you dragged in front of cameras and being accused of being anti-child).
In my imagination, I can just see this German dude on welfare, sitting at some pub and working up the deal for 7,000 Euro to be a fake-father, and doing this four times a year....thus making this his full-time job. Twenty years from now....the ARD news-people will stumble upon Johan (who hasn't worked in twenty years) but collected 28,000 Euro a year (non-taxable income), and fathered eighty kids. Someone will make a movie over it and Germans will just shake their heads in disbelief how it was quietly all accepted by the authorities.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Public TV Agenda in Germany
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.
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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