D This winter has the MDR under control. The station’s broadcasting council also noticed this on Monday. Some members don’t even make it to the meeting in Leipzig because of traffic problems. And because the responsible operations director, Ulrich Liebenow, is on vacation, the MDR site was only moderately cleared of snow in the morning.
Now the idea of a snow-pushing prison director is as funny as it is absurd, but it fits with the challenges of another MDR director. He will be newly elected this Monday, but he is an old acquaintance and his name is Boris Lochthofen.
In the future, he will jointly manage the two MDR locations in Halle and Leipzig as program director, which will be exciting enough. In general, this division is an anachronism from the old days, when radio (Halle) and television (Leipzig) still had their own media life. The MDR has long been set up to be cross-media, but because the Halle location is in the state treaty, it remains that way. Now there is at least a common boss.
The fact that Lochthofen is even taking part is a small Christmas miracle in the style of MDR, albeit without Bach. After all, he knows the store more than well. From 2016 to 2023 he was director of the MDR state broadcasting center in Erfurt and actually wanted to become director. But because some of the very leftover members of the MDR committees painted Lochthofen as a leftist, that didn’t work.
Defense against right
Now Lochthofen is giving up his well-paid job in the independent media industry and going back to the institution. Of course, he doesn’t earn bad money as a director either. But there is something more important at stake.
Because to put it bluntly, Boris Lochthofen can/must/should now defend the MDR directly against the AfD. The party is not only ahead in the polls for the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in the fall. She wants to terminate the MDR state treaty and all public broadcaster contracts and reduce broadcasting to a home radio that suits her.
But it’s not just about the AfD or just the MDR. Also the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony is currently making a lot of effort to drive the public service idea into the wall with its stubbornness about contributions. In doing so, she takes care of the AfD’s business at the same time. And thus endangers the entire system of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio.
Which doesn’t mean, please, that reforming public broadcasters doesn’t make sense. On the contrary, it must continue and require institutions such as committees and media policy to make a lot of leaps over their own shadows.
Here, too, Lochthofen can help the store with his experience (both private sector and ÖRR). And when the MDR directors in Halle and Leipzig shovel snow themselves next winter, lean management will be perfect. “Oh, how nice and useful, a community-building measure that also promotes corporate culture,” says the roommate.