Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 28, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The weekly newspaper «Die Zeit» reports this in its issue appear on Thursday. The paper refers to excerpts available to it from the first version of the report by the Commission for Determining the Financial Requirements of Broadcasters (KEF).
According to this, ARD spent 0.84 percent on its online offering in the current licence fee period (2005 to 2008), ZDF spent 0.9 percent and Deutschlandradio 0.81 percent. However, unlike the broadcasters, the commission includes the technical costs of distribution in its calculation, for example for retrieving video clips. On Wednesday, the KEF would neither confirm nor deny the figures and referred to its final report, which would be completed soon and published on January 21, 2008.
Martin Stadelmaier, head of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Chancellery, assesses the KEF’s result as a process that he had «found very annoying», as he told «Zeit». He demanded that the two cents in monthly fees that were spent too much on average be deducted from the public-service broadcasters in the next broadcasting licence fee period: «That is a simple plus-minus calculation,» Stadelmaier says.
The upper limit of 0.75 percent for online activities will no longer play a role in the next licence fee period (2009 to 2012), for which the KEF proposes an increase from the current 17.03 to 17.96 euros per month in its preliminary report. The broadcasters do not want to enter into another self-commitment, and there is broad agreement among the state governments that, when it comes to the broadcasters’ programmes, it is not the distribution channel but the content that matters.
