The distorted public service
Column Their bloated management structure makes the German public broadcasters almost immobile. Here in Germany, they are more down to earth, says Stephan Russ-Mohl.
Column Their bloated management structure makes the German public broadcasters almost immobile. Taken in isolation and viewed from Switzerland, it may be a trifle, a footnote at best in the history of public broadcasting: Germany's most prominent TV presenter, Günther Jauch, will not be hosting the most important German political talk show after all, the successor to "Christiansen" on Sunday evenings. However, if you look at the embarrassment in the Jauch case in the context of all the other scandals, affairs and bad decisions that have recently made ARD the talk of the town, a different picture emerges. The question arises as to whether the form of public service broadcasting that our big neighbor to the north can afford is becoming an obsolete model, with several surreptitious advertising and corruption scandals to be listed. The most serious one surrounding the soap "Marienhof" lasted for ten years before an investigative reporter discovered the machinations. ARD also secured exclusive coverage of the doped cyclist Jan Ullrich with a questionable sponsorship contract and misappropriated license fee money for this purpose. Also embarrassing is the hassle surrounding the Stasi involvement of sports reporter Hagen Bossdorf and the invitation and re-invitation of the Russian former world chess champion and regime critic Kasparov to the Christiansen program - to name just a few other cases. The fact that it has been possible to charge broadcasting fees for internet-enabled PCs is also evidence of a brazen self-service mentality.
ARD presents itself without functioning supervisory bodies, it is oversized and therefore exorbitantly expensive. Its many-voiced and bloated management structure makes it almost incapable of movement; there are too many autistic, self-absorbed hierarchs who are unable to listen to either their stations or the audience. Incidentally, the problem is not even the party affiliations of the public-law office holders, most of whom are elected using the zipper system (one on the left, the next on the right). As Kurt Biedenkopf astutely analysed years ago, they tend to cartelize across party lines, i.e. to support each other and thus immunize themselves against any kind of control.
On top of this, the public service is being distorted beyond recognition and is therefore actually superfluous: The
Public broadcasters compete far too much with private broadcasters during prime time instead of focusing on programs that meaningfully complement what the market already produces in terms of soaps, crime dramas, infotainment, expensive sports broadcasts and entertainment shows as well as cheap talk shows.
However, these observations cannot be transferred one-to-one to Switzerland: The per capita fee is even higher than in Germany. However, the income of SRG idée suisse is still modest compared to ARD and ZDF - there are only eight million instead of eighty million inhabitants who can potentially be tapped into as fee payers. Nevertheless, there must be enough money to offer acceptable TV programs in three different languages. As the wide-ranging discourse on the new mission statement has shown, the TV powers that be are more open and willing to talk, and at the same time they are more grounded. Under pressure from foreign competitors, the "Swissness" of the programs is over-accentuated to the point of occasionally being petty.
Nevertheless, we should note how our neighbors' public broadcasters are faltering. This also applies to the Italian RAI and the Austrian ORF. Of course, the new ARD chairman Raff and his Stuttgart director colleague Peter Voss are right: you can do without Jauch. Jauch also scores points, however, when he denounces the "lunatics", "profile neurotics" and "busybodies" in the ARD management levels in the Spiegel interview. It would also be possible without the ballast of gigantic broadcasting bureaucracies. Small is beautiful: Perhaps many things would run more smoothly with leaner broadcasters - i.e. with half as many broadcasting directors, TV directors and other public dignitaries, who all too often only block each other.
Stephan Russ-Mohl heads the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.
ARD presents itself without functioning supervisory bodies, it is oversized and therefore exorbitantly expensive. Its many-voiced and bloated management structure makes it almost incapable of movement; there are too many autistic, self-absorbed hierarchs who are unable to listen to either their stations or the audience. Incidentally, the problem is not even the party affiliations of the public-law office holders, most of whom are elected using the zipper system (one on the left, the next on the right). As Kurt Biedenkopf astutely analysed years ago, they tend to cartelize across party lines, i.e. to support each other and thus immunize themselves against any kind of control.
On top of this, the public service is being distorted beyond recognition and is therefore actually superfluous: The
Public broadcasters compete far too much with private broadcasters during prime time instead of focusing on programs that meaningfully complement what the market already produces in terms of soaps, crime dramas, infotainment, expensive sports broadcasts and entertainment shows as well as cheap talk shows.
However, these observations cannot be transferred one-to-one to Switzerland: The per capita fee is even higher than in Germany. However, the income of SRG idée suisse is still modest compared to ARD and ZDF - there are only eight million instead of eighty million inhabitants who can potentially be tapped into as fee payers. Nevertheless, there must be enough money to offer acceptable TV programs in three different languages. As the wide-ranging discourse on the new mission statement has shown, the TV powers that be are more open and willing to talk, and at the same time they are more grounded. Under pressure from foreign competitors, the "Swissness" of the programs is over-accentuated to the point of occasionally being petty.
Nevertheless, we should note how our neighbors' public broadcasters are faltering. This also applies to the Italian RAI and the Austrian ORF. Of course, the new ARD chairman Raff and his Stuttgart director colleague Peter Voss are right: you can do without Jauch. Jauch also scores points, however, when he denounces the "lunatics", "profile neurotics" and "busybodies" in the ARD management levels in the Spiegel interview. It would also be possible without the ballast of gigantic broadcasting bureaucracies. Small is beautiful: Perhaps many things would run more smoothly with leaner broadcasters - i.e. with half as many broadcasting directors, TV directors and other public dignitaries, who all too often only block each other.
Stephan Russ-Mohl heads the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.
