Public-run TV in Germany carves out a fair amount of tax funding from the public....roughly 17 Euro a month from every residence.....to cover the twenty-odd channels that exist.
There are various positive and negative feelings for the operation....if you chat with Germans about it or make your own personal observations.
Some supporters of public-run TV will tell you that it's in a crisis period because almost no one under the age of twenty-five watches much of anything....even the news or sports events. You might have a fair number of the university crowd who watch some of the political chat shows and the documentary-type programs, but the vast number of folks under twenty-five aren't interested in what they offer.
So, this week....they had a meeting and finally ironed some deal to start ANOTHER channel under the state-run TV umbrella. This one? Aimed strictly at the group between 14 and 29 years old. Start-up date? Late 2016. They say they want the 'platform' to offer options on radio, TV and online forums.
The themes? Well....it's a curious list. Music, youth culture, news related to youth, comedy, and 'entertainment'.
The folks who favor this have said that this has been in the discussion stage for five years. What they spent the time on? Unknown. I'd take a guess that they hired people to interview kids and younger adults.....to get some idea of what they'd watch.
Where this will go? Some political folks think that they can create modern and educational themes that will help transform the youth of Germany. I have my doubts. Shows like Breaking Bad, Flash, and Big Bang Theory are all blockbusters with German youth. I just don't see German state-run TV programming coming up with shows like this, and the guys who do the programming just aren't the type who'd pay big-money for something like Flash.
The idea that kids would buy into some news theme or political chat show episode? Zero. They'd just start laughing at you.
Science Fiction? That's the one area that the younger German generation might buy into....if they'd create their own brand-name or style of SF for German TV. The odds of this? Fairly remote....if the typical programming crowd have anything to say about the matter. There's almost zero SF produced on any of the state-run networks, and almost zero purchased via other distributors.
Not to sound discouraging, but I don't know where this idea will go and have any success.
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