Germany has a large variety of media at the Länder level. But the situation is quite different with regards to television, radio, and print.
Regional public service news broadcasters operate at the level of the 16 German states. In some cases, they cooperate within one corporation, so that instead of 16, there are only 9 public service broadcasters of ARD. Table 2 below shows the market share of the third television programmes (ARD) in their transmission area. In each area, these television programmes also produce news for smaller sub-regions.
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Local or regional broadcasters have been playing a minor role in commercial television. According to the interstate treaty on broadcasting, regional window programmes are to be set up in the two nationwide full-range television channels with the highest reach. This applies to RTL and SAT1. However, national broadcasters are based in different Länder, the most important ones in Cologne/Northrhine Westphalia (RTL group) and Munich/Bavaria (ProSiebenSat1). Non-commercial broadcasting projects such as open channels had been previously supported by the supervising bodies, but transformed into training channels for universities and other educational institutions.
The German radio landscape is largely shaped by regional and local offerings. This results from the regulatory competence of the federal states in matters of broadcasting, leading to regional rules for public broadcasting, and regional licensing of commercial broadcasting.
The public service broadcasting corporations each broadcast several radio programmes, so that altogether there are 64 public service radio programmes in Germany on the regional level (ARD). Although this multitude of radio channels allows for a rich news provision in the regions, it is also the subject of numerous attacks on public service media, which is under strong pressure to reduce this diversity.
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In the ranking of the top 20 radio programmes, the most popular channels of public service media hold 15 positions. Table 4 shows the daily reach in thousands.
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Additionally, there are 383 commercial radio channels at a regional or local level (Vaunet, 2020). Between one and four commercial radio stations broadcast in each Länder – an exception is the Berlin area and Brandenburg, with 14 state-wide programmes (Rühle, 2014). There are also significant differences in the number of local radio stations between states. Some federal states (Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia) have no local radio stations, whereas in Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Baden-Württemberg, there are 10–20 local radio stations. North Rhine-Westphalia has 45 local stations, marketed by the state-wide radio NRW. The greatest local radio diversity is in Bavaria, with 65 local radio channels. However, the majority of them are owned by a few media owners, such as Axel Springer Verlag, Nordwest-Zeitung, Burda, Madsack, Moira, Oschmann, Regiocast, RTL Group, and Studio Gong (Lehmann, 2016).
Local and regional newspapers are published in and provide information about one of the 401 German districts (Kreise and kreisfreie Städte) (Der Bundeswahlleiter, 2019). A closer look at ownership concentration in the regional newspaper market reveals a tendency towards monopolisation. There are different figures, yet all of them yield the same result. In most of the districts, there is no competition between local and regional newspapers.
As an example, we describe the situation in North Rhine-Westphalia, which is the Land with the highest population. The efforts of a few large publishing houses led to (partial) takeovers, cooperations, and the establishment of new joint editorial offices. This also led to an increasing number of newspapers that are actually in competition with each other exchanging their content (Landtag Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2020). Various cooperation models of editorial offices are leading to increasing concentration in the daily newspaper market in the number of titles and main editorial offices, but circulation continues to decline. The number of monopoly areas is growing in local reporting, and the number of newspaper editorial offices that create content themselves is declining (Röper, 2018).
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The local media provision is thus problematic. While dozens of television channels and several national daily and weekly newspapers report about current events in Germany and all over the world, in some places, one can be glad if there is still a local edition or a locally reporting radio or television programme. In many places, local media diversity is no longer even conceivable. Some mayors supplement their official journal with editorial contributions on current events in the municipality; this is legally questionable, but in many cases, it is born out of necessity. If there is no one left to whom the official could send their press release, then they themselves quickly become a media provider.
