TV Fees for Computers
September 24, 2006
Currently, people in Germany pay an annual license fee of around 200 euros ($255) for television and radio in the home; or just 66 euros for radio alone. The money is used to fund the country's public TV broadcasters, ARD and ZDF, as well as German national radio and French-German TV broadcaster Arte.
In 2004, the German state premiers had agreed to a plan for a new fee that would apply to households that did not pay the TV and radio fees, but had Internet-connected PCs. The fee was to take effect in 2007.
Debate took off again this week as public broadcaster ARD announced its plan to introduce a monthly fee of 5.52 euros for each business or household with an Internet-capable PC. It said ZDF agreed to the plan, which would go into effect at the end of this year.
The announcement was followed by vocal opposition from German business groups. Some 14 major business groups came out with a public statement calling for the German states to follow the lead of Schleswig-Holstein, which has come out strongly against the new fee.
Business up in arms
The business associations included the German Chamber of Commerce (DIHK), the Federation of German Industries (BDI) and the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM).
BITKOM officials said that the ARD plan is a "rotten compromise that is being cemented into a payment scheme long overdue for change."
The business groups are agitating for a postponement of the fee. The time until then should be used "to seriously discuss a reform of broadcasting license fees," the businesses said in a statement.
"The system of financing for public broadcasters is nearly 50 years old, and desperately out of date," they added. "It cannot be that the fee revenues steadily grow with the number of apparatuses, while the number of users remains static."
Germany's broadcasting regulators meanwhile failed to come to a final decision on the matter. They decided to hand off the controversial topic to Germany's state premiers, who will meet on the issue in late October.