For a long time there was speculation about the exact extent, but now the facts are on the table: Pro Sieben Sat 1 wants to cut around 400 jobs in Germany this year. The number is surprisingly high, and it’s the biggest drawdown in a long time. It corresponds to around every tenth job in the core entertainment business and in the holding company in Unterföhring near Munich, said a spokeswoman for the media group. The job cuts are to be carried out in a socially responsible manner through a volunteer program. Operational redundancies are to be avoided “as far as possible”. Positions that become vacant should not be filled.
In addition to the RTL Group, Pro Sieben Sat 1 is the largest private broadcaster in Germany and is also active in Austria and Switzerland. Free-to-air, advertising-financed channels such as Sat 1, Pro Sieben, Kabel eins and Sixx have long suffered from the advertising slump and competition from major streaming providers such as Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime. Younger viewers in particular are turning away from linear television and prefer online services. They want to decide for themselves where to watch what and when. The new company boss Bert Habets had therefore announced a realignment and job cuts several weeks ago, but left the exact extent open.
“The job cuts is a difficult but necessary business decision so that Pro Sieben Sat 1 can increase its earning power and grow sustainably and healthily again,” explained CEO Habets. The former RTL manager surprisingly moved to the top last November and has since fundamentally restructured the board. Most recently, the long-standing television manager Wolfgang Link, who was mainly responsible for the channels and content, left, Habets took over the tasks himself.
“We have a clear plan with a focus on our entertainment offering and especially on Joyn,” Habets said. As a group, Pro Sieben Sat 1 wants to become number one in the German-speaking entertainment market. The Joyn streaming platform was only completely taken over in autumn 2022, until then the US group Discovery was involved. Like the group broadcasters, Joyn, with around four million customers, is primarily financed by advertising, and there are only a few paying customers. Habets had just courted the public service institutions for cooperation in the media library area. The ARD and ZDF media libraries should also be available at Joyn – so far you can only see the live programs from public and private broadcasters there.
Bert Habets comes from RTL and has been head of Pro Sieben Sat 1 since November 2022.
(Photo: Imago)
There had also been speculation that Pro Sieben Sat 1 was interested in taking over the German pay channel Sky. He is also currently in crisis and recently stopped all German-language productions. Apparently the talks are dragging on. Customers pay subscription fees for Sky’s offer, which runs under the Wow brand, but revenue is apparently declining. Together, Joyn and Wow could create a larger streaming platform. According to the American model, advertising and subscription-financed platforms with TV stations would then be under one roof. But the competition is tough, RTL operates RTL plus, along with Disney +, Netflix, Amazon Prime and, in the sports sector, Dazn. At the same time, viewers’ budgets for such offers are limited.
The company also operates comparison portals and dating platforms
The television business is anything but easy, and its competitor RTL, which belongs to the Bertelsmann group and had just taken over Gruner + Jahr, is also struggling. Now Pro Sieben Sat 1 wants to start over. The goal is “a more efficient structure, a competitive cost base and processes clearly geared towards digital transformation,” the company said. This is a priority so that the group can continue to invest “consistently in the future”, especially in content and digital offerings.
However, Pro Sieben Sat 1 is not only active in the television business, but also operates a whole range of Internet activities. These include the comparison portal Verivox, Billigermietwagen.de or the dating platform Parship-Meet, for the latter an IPO was under discussion. Recently there has also been a whole series of changes in management in the group and turbulence. The publication of the balance sheet had to be postponed. The strategy was unclear, and there was criticism from the shareholders at the last general meeting. The shares of the former Dax company went up slightly on Tuesday, but the market value is just under two billion euros.
The Italian media company Media for Europe (MFE, formerly Mediaset) holds around a good quarter of the shares in Pro Sieben Sat 1. The group of the late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi wants to create a pan-European television provider. “As far as our presence in Germany is concerned, we see ourselves as long-term shareholders,” said Pier Silvio Berlusconi, son of Silvio and head of MFE, two weeks ago. His father’s death won’t change that. Recently, a Czech investor also joined Pro Sieben Sat 1.