Leading By Cooperation

Michael Hedges January 11, 2011 Follow on Twitter

One lesson from new media is the benefit of cooperation. Technologies being what they are, competing for devices never works. Audiences move quickly through each new phase. Broadcasters and publishers are learning about the power of cooperation and the costs.

Monika Piel succeeded Peter Boudgoust at the first of the year, becoming the first woman to lead Germany’s umbrella organization for public broadcasting ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland - Association of Public Broadcasting Corporations in the Federal Republic of Germany). She’s also the first ARD chairman to come from the radio side of public broadcasting; she was Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR - West German Broadcasting) radio director between 1998 and 2007 when she was named WDR’s first woman general director.

“It will be exciting and stressful at the same time,” she said to Tageszeitung (January 2) in one of several interviews noting her arrival. “I look forward to it.” Germany’s public broadcasting system of 11 regional organizations mirrors, somewhat, the federal political system. ARD is meant, somewhat, as a national broadcaster, producing the main national television network Das Erste. Most ARD output is cooperative.

ARD and the regional German pubic broadcasters enjoy stable and generous license fee funding, more than €5 billion annually. “We are not the Salvation Army,” said Ms Piel. Advertising contributes less than 10% of total revenues. Demands for more, more and more – particularly in new media offerings – have been met with organizational streamlining.

Cooperation with private sector broadcasters and newspaper publishers has been fleeting.  Sometime the private broadcasters scream; sometime the publishers.  ARD affiliate Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) will borrow ProSiebenSat TV star Stefan Raab as co-host for the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest. ARD and ProSiebenSat cooperated in the selection of Lena Meyer-Landrut, winner of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest.

The new media world is a challenge for all public broadcasters, not for technical reasons. “We need to be present on all distribution channels to meet our programming mandate,” said Ms Piel to Handelsblatt (January 3). “I am deeply convinced of this.”

After litigation from private sector broadcasters and newspaper publishers and complaints to the European Commission the German Federal Court presented public broadcasters with fait accompli: accept a test for entering new media offerings or give up new media. “The three-step test is, of course, a hindrance,” said Ms Piel to Handelsblatt. “We had to spend much money… to review the market impact of our websites.”

Private sector competitors were aghast at ARD releasing a free iPhone app for nightly television news program Tagesschau. “It is this is an unacceptable market distortion,” said publisher Axel Springer’s spokesperson (December 22, 2009). Private broadcasters association (VPRT) president Jürgen Doetz threatened a complaint to the European Commission. Tagesschau news director Kai Gniffke reported to Spiegel (January 10) that the iPhone app had been downloaded 740,000 times, saying the uptake is “encouraging.”

If that was a low point in relations between German public and private sector media, a thaw – at least with newspaper publishers – began to melt some of the ill-feeling in 2010. Newspaper publishers visited the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). And public broadcasters recognized the need for a successful outreach to newspaper publishers, a traditional ally in battles with private sector broadcasters. Axel Springer CEO Matthis Döpfner is “thinking in the right direction,” said Ms Piel. “He wants an alliance of quality providers to compete against Google, Apple and Vodafone. ARD is ready for it. We should not leave the online store only to the multinational corporations.”

On the question of mobile phone apps, Ms Piel suggested to Frankfurter Rundschau (January 2) that ARD might get into the for-fee apps business. “If the Publishers Association wants to charge for apps then I will strongly encourage payable apps for public service broadcasters.” In a different interview Ms Piel referred to free content on the web as a “birth defect.” Will bonding with Rupert Murdoch come soon?

Younger audiences are part of the plan, said Ms Piel, just not necessarily with television. Her predecessor Peter Boudgoust favored developing a new public television channel targeting the “hole” between offerings for children and adults. The mean age for Das Erste, ARD’s main network channel, has crept well past 50.

Programming such a youth channel, said Ms Piel to Tageszeitung (January 2), would be “extremely difficult because we must always be public service.” She noted that the top ten TV programs reaching young adults were “not all public service formats.”

Rival German public TV broadcaster ZDF fired up digital channel ZDFneo with British and US imports hoping to reach an audience between 20 and 35 years. ARD cooperates with ZDF on several television projects; the Phoenix channel and children’s channel Ki.Ka. Phoenix, an event-oriented news and documentary channel, gained fame in 2005 for breaking the news world-wide of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger being named Pope Benedict XVI.

Most of the regional public TV broadcasters cooperate on the Tatort crime drama series. That cooperation extends to Austrian public broadcaster ORF and Swiss-German public broadcaster DFS. Last Sunday (January 9) Tatort was the top rated program in Germany with a 23.3% market share. Second place was news program Tagesschau with a 22.2% market share. ARD also cooperates with French public TV on the acclaimed Arte cultural channel and with ORF and DFS on 3sat.

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