“We don’t want to attack ZDF,” said program director Christine Strobl at the end of June when rumors were circulating that the first wanted to bring a new talk into the program on Tuesdays Markus Lanz should resemble in the second. According to an internal presentation from early summer, which the SZ has received, at that time the ZDF was viewed as a rival. “We must not leave the field to the ZDF,” it says in the corresponding remarks on the new “fleet strategy” by ARD program director Christine Strobl and her deputies Florian Hager and Oliver Köhr. Nobody is “as wide-reaching as the community program of the first, we can and must remain the national player”. One has to act now, “and we can do that too!” So is the ARD fleet planning an attack on ZDF, which is not only much better positioned journalistically than ARD, but has also been renewed a lot and, for example, will present the Today News in a new design from this Monday on?
Christine Strobl answered this question in a statement to the SZ with no: “There can be no talk of rivalry or even an attack on ZDF.” The overarching goal of the concept is to create an offer for the entire population. “This is to be done by strengthening the ARD media library and by profiling the linear ARD community program Das Erste. At the same time, as part of a fleet strategy, all ARD offers are to be aligned in such a way that they support and complement one another and do not compete with one another . “
There is still uncertainty about what Strobl’s strategy exactly means; ARD speaks of an “ongoing process”. The top three program makers have stated that the distribution of programs in the media library and in the first should be considered equally important in the future in order to reach a younger audience who no longer use traditional television. “A broadcast slot alone does not generate any relevance,” Strobl said last week in an interview explained. This can be understood as a harsh announcement to those who are passionately fighting against the World mirror loses its traditional slot and is moved to late Monday evening; many well-known active and former foreign correspondents protest against the relocation to the, as they call it, “death zone”.
They received support on Monday from the Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft Medien der Berliner Bündnis-Greens, who massively criticized this decision: The World mirror To sideline about its prime airtime shows “a high degree of ignorance for journalistic achievements and for core elements of the public service program”. Airtime is also “a journalistic-editorial commitment to relevance”. They speak frankly of the “power-conscious new program director of the ARD, who has a certain political agenda when it comes to displacing the information competence of the ARD into the low-reach linear airtime”.
Plans to reduce the number of political magazines broadcast each year and to replace some with documentaries are also causing considerable unrest. According to the presentation, the program management for the “fleet strategy” should, among other things, “bundle budgets for the redirection” and “introduce and adhere to clear success criteria for broadcasting slots and media library use”. Strobl, Hager and Köhr had also already identified “potential for change” in the original in the template: In addition to documentaries and reports, magazines, talks as well as political, economic and international reporting are mentioned. Strobl, Hager and Köhr should also work out on behalf of the artistic directors which previous offers they consider dispensable. That doesn’t sound like the unrest in the ARD will soon subside.