Germany’s public broadcasters will drastically reduce the programing they put online in response to attacks from commercial channels and newspapers that the online offerings represent unfair competition.
Markus Schachter, director of public broadcaster ZDF, said the channel will reduce its online offerings by 70 percent and cut the length of time that catch-up programing is available for streaming. Reports on the official websites of ZDF and sister channel ARD will now be taken down after one week, and reports on sporting events, such as Germany’s Bundesliga soccer games, will be pulled after only one day online.
Schachter also said ZDF would focus more on posting video to its site and greatly reduce its text-only offerings. The move is a sop to the German newspaper industry, which has complained that ARD and ZDF’s free websites unfairly compete with the online versions of their publications.
(Source: Reuters/Hollywood Reporter)
on Jun 6th, 2009 at 12:33
There’s something missing in that picture. It’s not like the German public broadcasters had given in voluntarily. Twelve months ago, EU commissioner for information society and media Viviane Reding had complained about the public broadcasters’ web offerings, citing EU regulations. She appealed to Germany that they should set limits to their public broadcasters on what kind of online content is acceptable, and the German states (Bundesländer) followed suit in their new state treaty on broadcast services and telecommunication media (Rundfunkstaatsvertrag).
ARD and ZDF really tried to defend themselves. For example, they argued that their fee payers had funded their productions and should have the right to continously access it. But in the end they had to cave in.
I guess some politicians aren’t too unhappy that all the critical reports from political TV magazines will now vanish after one week.
on Jun 6th, 2009 at 20:41
The matter is even more complicated. Any online activities beyond making broadcast content available for seven days (equivalent to BBC iPlayer, considered as broadcast distribution, not as real online service) requires a procedure that is basically a copy of the “public value test” for the BBC.
So it remains to be seen what will be the outcome of these public value tests. However, ZDF indeed choose to eliminate 80 percent (that’s the figure quoted in Germany) of its online content and not submitting it for the public value test at all.
Also related to this matter is the closure of two WDR radio channels, presumably prompted by the circumstance that it was no longer possible to run more radio stations than authorized*) by way of distributing them online only. Thus WDR 2 Klassik and 1 Live Kunst have been eliminated. The latter was on digital broadcasting platforms (including DVB-S via Astra 1H) as well, and it has been replaced by Kiraka here, a previous online-only channel with repeats of childrens programmes from WDR 5.
*) Yes, the public broadcasters in Germany are basically banned from launching any new radio stations, away from the small detail that in theory each regional broadcasting institution could launch a single new channel for exclusive DAB+ distribution. But on the other hand this is quite irrelevant, since in the real world radio stations are being closed down for budget reasons. RBB’s Radio Multikulti was probably not the last one.
on Jun 6th, 2009 at 21:59
I wonder why the public doesn’t complain in that they have paid for this content through licence fees. Why did ARD and ZDF lose this argument?
on Jun 8th, 2009 at 17:15
Are the newspapers and other private media financed by the television license? I don’t think so. So they should have no reason to complain. What public channels do, is funded by the license payer, and as such, they have the very right to serve the public their best. In my opinion, private media - quit whining and learn to accept competition!