The RTL Germany management team has been determined: Gruner + Jahr boss Stephan Schäfer and Matthias Dang, previously head of the advertising marketer Ad Alliance, will in future lead the company on an equal footing. The parent company Bertelsmann announced on Wednesday. The previous boss of RTL Germany, Bernd Reichart, has to give up the management position and will stay with Bertelsmann.
Many had already expected the duo. Schäfer, who also worked for RTL, is internally a confidante of Bertelsmann board member Thomas Rabe. The 47-year-old who has been Long-term head of the company, Julia Jäkel, leaves became head of Gruner + Jahr in March, is gradually expanding his position in the company.
Matthias Dang was already part of the management team at RTL Germany, and he should get along well with Schäfer. With the appointment as CEO of RTL Deutschland, the 54-year-old will also join Bertelsmann’s Group Management Committee (GMC), which is located directly below the Executive Board – i.e. below Thomas Rabe. The second new CEO with equal rights, Stephan Schäfer, is already in the GMC.
With Schäfer and Dang at the helm, content and marketing are on an equal footing – this also harbors dangers
It is not yet clear what the personnel rogue means for Reichart. Although he remains without a head post at the GMC, it is unclear what tasks he will take on in the future, such as whether he could take over some of the tasks of CEO Rabe. Reichart is also handing over the management of the Bertelsmann Content Alliance to Schäfer, in which RTL Germany, the film and television production company Ufa, the Penguin Random House publishing group, Gruner + Jahr and the music company BMG work together to create new formats. With the founding of the Content Alliance, Bertelsmann merged its German content businesses in January 2019. Since then, Schäfer has been responsible for television and magazines, even if he had no previous TV experience.
At the beginning of August, Bertelsmann announced that RTL will take over the magazine business from Gruner + Jahr for 230 million euros. At the time, it was still unclear who should run the company.
With Schäfer and Dang as the dual leadership of RTL, content and marketing are now on an equal footing. What may seem up-to-date from a company perspective, however, also harbors a risk. If content is increasingly geared towards whether it is marketable or not, it loses its profile. It is similar with Gruner + Jahr magazines, Geo, star or Brigitte, already happened. There is hardly any space left for niche topics and your own profile. Instead, the group relies on content that is compatible with the masses.
In line with this, the change in personnel had already become known on Tuesday, the day when Bertelsmann published its – good – half-year figures and spoke of a record figure. For the year as a whole, the company expects consolidated earnings of just under two billion euros.