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Logos of the Tagesschau app and the ZDF media library
Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd / picture alliance / dpa
Heike Raab, coordinator of the broadcasting commission of the federal states, usually formulates very carefully.
But at one point you can see and hear the Rhineland-Palatinate state secretary's rejection, even contempt, at the press conference on Friday.
Namely when she utters the word “media library”, which ARD and ZDF have for years traded as a kind of magic formula for the digital future.
"Media library sounds like a video store," says the SPD politician.
»Like we were still living in the eighties.«
According to the will of the Commission, which is headed by Raab and which has a say in the wording of the state media treaties in Germany, ARD and ZDF should digitally merge under the term »platform«.
What initially sounds like non-binding new wording has far-reaching consequences: Up until now, the first and the second have muddled around in their own media libraries and only suggested users to link to the media library of the competition.
Now, however, politicians are demanding that the two families of broadcasters merge to form a digital platform on which the audience can also communicate with each other and with the operators.
A kind of public Facebook, so to speak.
ARD and ZDF will not be merged
For two days, the heads of the state chancellery and ministries responsible for media in the federal states met for a working meeting to discuss future reform processes in public service broadcasting, which has fallen into disrepute in recent months due to corruption scandals and self-mutilation.
Maximum demands of critical ARD and ZDF observers are therefore not met.
A merger of the two broadcasting units, which even ARD chairman Tom Buhrow, who was in power until the end of December, publicly mused about in his desperation, has been refrained from.
And a settlement of the Saarland broadcasting, which belongs to the ARD association, and Radio Bremen have also been rejected.
Oliver Schenk, head of the CDU-led State Chancellery in Saxony, who also spoke at the press conference, emphasized that the aim was to maintain competition among the institutions.
But: "This competition must not take place in technology." Hence the common platform.
And therefore also a review of the more than 50 joint facilities of ARD and ZDF.
The broadcasters would have to push ahead with their consolidation and, if necessary, free up capital by abolishing special interest channels and a cover program for radio waves in order to push ahead with the required full digital network.
The catalog of measures sounded a bit as if the new ARD chairman and SWR director Kai Gniffke had formulated it.
In a recent interview with SPIEGEL, he dreamed of a large joint digital platform with ZDF, promised to wind up zombie channel One and pondered merging radio waves.
Meanwhile, ZDF, which is less prone to scandals than ARD, has so far remained aloof when it comes to digital sisterhood dreams.
Why change what the house thinks is going well?
Stay away from freedom of broadcasting!
But according to the stipulations of politics, ZDF now has to rethink and manage technical resources in cooperation with the public-law sleazeballs of ARD.
Schenk warned: "If certain milestones are not reached, funds will not be released."
Apparently, before the meeting, the commission for determining the financial needs of the broadcasters (KEF), in which the budgets of the broadcasters are checked, had met.
Accordingly, it turned out that there was “additional income in the three-digit million range” when the contribution was collected.
Reserves are to be formed from them, with which the required structural measures can be pushed forward in the long term without the monthly broadcasting fee of 18.34 euros having to increase.
The additional income results from the fact that the number of households liable to pay contributions has recently increased.
Phew, lucky again: an increase in the contribution could not be conveyed politically.
According to the wishes of the Broadcasting Commission, however, the way in which ARD and ZDF help to shape the opinion-forming process in the state will not remain the same.
Both the SPD politician Raab and the CDU politician Schenk mocked the term "attitude" several times.
Referring to a dialogue process with contributors, Raab said: »Attitude is something that is rejected.« Schenk called for »more journalism and less attitude«.
What the politician forgets: Attitude - no matter how airy and trite the word is - belongs in the area of opinion.
And that is part of the freedom of broadcasting guaranteed by the Basic Law.
