“ARD Buffet”
Advisory service is coming to an end
The “ARD-Buffet” will soon no longer be on the air.
© SWR/Peter A Schmidt
The “ARD Buffet” is discontinued. After a change in the slot, the format will no longer be continued from 2025.
TV viewers must move away from the “ARD-Buffet”. The show, which has been broadcast live from the SWR radio station in Baden-Baden every working day since 1998 and broadcast from 12:15 p.m. to 1 p.m. on the first station, will make way for an extended “lunchtime magazine” on ARD and ZDF , according to a statement by SWR on Friday (June 30).
A change is pending
First of all, the format, which deals with cooking, service and DIY topics, among other things, will be moved to an earlier slot from 11:15 a.m. to 12 p.m. in the coming year for the transition. The “Mittagsmagazin” from ARD and ZDF will be extended to two hours from January 2024. From 2025, SWR will no longer continue the “ARD Buffet”.
“The now foreseeable end of the ‘ARD-Buffet’ is a turning point,” explains Kai Gniffke, SWR director and ARD chairman, in a statement. Together with ARD and ZDF, the aim of the new lunchtime magazine is to “continue to provide the audience with a good and journalistically strong offer at lunchtime in the future”.
By the end of 2024, the program will be broadcast “more than 350 times live from Baden-Baden in proven quality”, adds the responsible SWR program director Clemens Bratzler. The end of the daily live broadcast is a painful step for the SWR and for the employees. Now, through the reallocation of financial resources, new and above all digital formats are to be created “that also reach younger target groups”.