Wolfram Weimer, Germany's Kulturstaatsminister, told a Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung conference in Berlin that ZDF could be privatised and ARD's nine regional broadcasters merged into four or five. ARD and ZDF together collect roughly €9 billion (~$10 billion) a year from the compulsory licence fee, making them Europe's largest public broadcasting bloc and major commissioners of drama and documentary. Weimer framed the system as a "duopoly" with Big Tech that squeezes private players like RTL; ARD directors, he said, have told him Radio Bremen and Saarländischer Rundfunk are redundant. The catch: broadcasting is the German states' jurisdiction, not the federal government's, so the speech is an opening salvo, not policy.
German Culture Minister Floats ZDF Privatisation
