Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 20, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
ZDF director-general Markus Schächter and ARD chairman Fritz Raff have asked the federal states to refrain from their planned commission for a jointly operated programme for mobile reception.
In a letter to Martin Stadelmeier, head of the federal states’ Broadcasting Commission and head of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Chancellery, they said the financial and administrative effort required for such a project would be disproportionately high.
Regardless of this, ZDF and ARD’s main channels will continue to be distributed via Mobile 3.0 as before. This should also be understood as a clear signal to the federal states that ARD and ZDF did not want to keep launching new channels at any cost. Rather, their aim was to make programmes that provide licence-fee payers with added journalistic value, ARD chairman Fritz Raff and ZDF director-general Markus Schächter agreed.
ZDF and ARD had originally proposed offering one additional channel each alongside their main channels, compiled from existing programming specifically for the needs of mobile reception on phones. This would have allowed important experience with mobile television to be gained within a manageable financial framework while also increasing the appeal of the Mobile 3.0 platform.
The current working draft of the 12th Amendment to the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty instead commissions ZDF and ARD to provide a “jointly operated television programme for mobile reception on small screens (mobile TV), including regional elements.” This would result in significantly greater bureaucratic, planning and broadcast-engineering effort, with considerable financial consequences for production, rights acquisition and distribution.
