The terms “short process” and “ARD” really don’t go together. On this Friday, program director Christine Strobl nevertheless presented the major program reform for 2022, which is intended to attract a younger audience and which the directors and art directors have now approved, in a fairly short time. Or, as Strobl said, after a “short, intensive process”. It seems certain that the proposals that Strobl, her deputy Florian Hager and editor-in-chief Oliver Köhr had initially presented internally since the spring, have promoted the culture of debate in the ARD, which Strobl doesn’t mind at all: “If you don’t provoke a protest at the beginning, you have you don’t change anything either. “
The protest has certainly paid off from the point of view of the foreign correspondents, who – like many viewers – are against relocating the World mirror from the Sunday before Daily Topics on the late Monday evening because they feared the importance of foreign issues. The result must actually be a dream for her: The World mirror stays on Sunday, will be extended to 45 minutes and will come in future at 6.30 p.m., directly after an extended one Report from Berlin. The correspondents are also allowed to use the broadcast slot on late Monday evening with reports and documentaries, two genres that are supposedly more suitable for media libraries than magazine contributions. Monday will be an “information day”, starting with documentaries and reports at 8:15 pm up to a still unknown, new knowledge format later in the evening, series of history documents and the ARD story. This should also counter fears that ARD will shift its core mission to media library content that is common on social media in the future.
Obviously, where the money for the reform comes from has not yet been properly clarified
Nevertheless, the media library is the core towards which everything is heading in this reform, as Strobl, Hager and Köhr had already made clear in the spring. There videos should find their audience completely independently of the linear ARD program – young people who do not turn on the television, but who of course still have to pay the radio license. On Friday, Hager very openly stated the difference between television products and formats for the media library: The offers there should be “younger, more target-group-specific and more diverse than in the first program”. From next year onwards, the program makers in the media library want to show two new high-quality fictional series, two documentary formats or series as well as a long documentary film every month, as Hager mentioned. Comedy – Carolin Kebekus is likely to be one of the most important faces – as well as an investigative piece that is supposed to become a “topic of conversation” and “attract attention” via social media. The film subsidiary Degeto is in the process of producing media library projects, especially series, worth 20 million euros, said Strobl.
The question of money in this reform is likely to fuel the ARD’s culture of debate. Obviously, it is not yet really clear which reallocations should bring the necessary financial plus for the program directorate that is necessary for the reform. It is, as the ARD chairman Tom Buhrow said, a “substantially single-digit” million amount per year that has to come from the existing budgets of the broadcasters. Buhrow says there is no more staff for the new formats. Nevertheless, he asserted: “We will never neglect linear television.” Strobl nodded. She wants the football in the linear program in the future directly on the Sunday before the daily News broadcasting rights were also acquired from the second Bundesliga. From 2022, Sandra Maischberger will receive guests on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for “a new, in-depth discussion format”. On Friday at 9.45 p.m. Das Erste will place a new comedy program in the future. However, Strobl absolutely cannot see any competition with Lanz on ZDF and the Comedy Friday there. Combat programming – it used to be an Olympic sport between ARD and ZDF – would ultimately also contradict the basic assumption that the placement on traditional television no longer really matters.