H
hereditary day of media policy
By Rainer Maria Rilke-Robra
Sir: it’s time. The summer of my term was very big.
Cast your shadow on broadcasting reform,
and let the winds loose in the asylum corridors.
Command the last state treaties to be full;
give them two additional paragraphs on the press question,
urge them to complete the KEF process and carry
Contribution stability as a goal for all times.
Anyone who doesn’t have a majority now will soon no longer have one.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will watch, read, write long constitutional complaints
and will be back and forth at media conventions
wander restlessly and rub your eyes.
This could be a summary of what the CDU factions of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt put together in their “joint resolution paper” for their 2026 winter meeting last week. And it’s true about the autumn of media politics. Saxony-Anhalt’s head of the state chancellor Rainer Robrawho has been involved in the battle with the Union like no other Union politician for over two decades Public law is likely to leave this year. The Magdeburg state parliament will be re-elected in the fall, and according to all surveys, the AfD is currently clearly ahead.
This is as slim as it is impossible to implement
So the resolution paper has something of a legacy and is making a ripple. Essential points of the ÖRR reform are “not yet covered” by the Reform State Treaty. In other areas there is a risk of “expanding rather than streamlining the cost framework” because the broadcasters are now supposed to become a platform. The merger of ARD and ZDF is once again on the cards without becoming concrete. “The mission and structure of the ÖRR must therefore be further reformed, without prohibitions on thinking and the sensitivities of individual federal states,” demands the paper. This is as slim as it is impossible to implement.
The institutions are currently struggling with the reduction in departmental channels that has already been imposed on them. “Next level shit,” ARD chairman Florian Hager called it, because he not only has to get his own nine-fold pile of chickens into the stable, but also ZDF.
But do people really want less ÖRR? No, they want him differently. Slimmer, perhaps, but that’s not the core of the problem.
The MDR, which has always been slim and will hopefully soon be spruced up, is moving forward and will only have one program director. An old friend will probably bring the bunch together. Boris Lochthofen was MDR boss in Thuringia from 2016-2023, so he knows his stable. And because the headquarters of the future MDR overall program director has to be in Saxony-Anhalt due to the sensitivities of a very specific federal state, he even has to deal with Robra again. “The institution isn’t allowed to choose its own location with a view to efficiency? That’s strange.” says the roommate.