Traditionally, media concentration is measured in terms of the media sectors of print, television, radio, and online media. This is also the guiding ratio for this indicator. However, changes due to the convergence of media markets, media offerings, and end devices are not sufficiently taken into account by the current media concentration description, or by the media concentration law.
The television market is divided into public service and the commercial market. At the end of the first half of 2018, there were 21 public and 169 private television channels with a nationwide licence to broadcast, as well as teleshopping channels and programmes with a foreign licence. More than 200 regional and local programmes complement the television offering (KEK, 2018: 18). While public broadcasters altogether had a market share of 47.8 per cent of the audience, commercial broadcasters have a slight majority (AGF, 2019). These have, for a while, been divided into two big groups: one – the RTL group – being part of the Bertelsmann company; and the other – ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG – now a Societas Europaea/SE with the US-Investor Capital Group and Credit Suisse holding significant shares (Lang, 2019).
The RTL group has an audience market share of 27.2 per cent of the television audience market, Pro7-Sat1 has 17.8 per cent, and the rest goes to diverse broadcasters, the biggest among them being Sky, with a market share of 1.5 per cent of the whole television audience market (KEK, 2018: 68). Looking only at the commercial broadcasting market, the three biggest companies have a concentration ratio CR3 of 0.8 which is an extremely high ratio.
The German radio market is characterised by a pluralistic ownership structure and a multitude of local and regional radio programmes. The main owners include regional newspaper publishers and national media groups. On a nationwide scale, no broadcaster has a market share relevant under media concentration law. According to the Media Diversity Monitor (MedienVielfaltsMonitor, 2019), the opinion market for radio is dominated by ARD’s public service programmes, with a market share of 55 per cent, the largest private provider is RTL Group with a market share of 7 per cent, ahead of Regiocast with 4 per cent and Müller Medien with 3 per cent (KEK, 2018: 20). Here, the CR3 on the commercial radio market is a weak 0.31.
In recent years, the increase in concentration has been moderate and has been in the range of a tenth of a percentage point. In 2018’s first quarter, it had increased by 1.8 percentage points compared with 2016. The market share of the ten largest publishing groups in terms of total circulation is 61.6 per cent. Within the category of subscription newspapers, the five highest-circulation publishing groups have a market share of 38.6 per cent (Röper, 2018). Calculated according to concentration ratio with reference to the three biggest companies, the CR3 is at 0.31 – a low level. Concentration on the print market is increasing because of economic pressure due to declining circulation figures and advertising revenue. About 60 per cent of German districts are served by only one local or regional paper, and about 35 per cent by two (Schütz, 2012: 586). The highest concentration can be observed in the single-copy-sales segment of newspapers, with about 80 per cent belonging to Axel Springer SE. Their flagship tabloid daily Bild reaches 11.32 million readers, despite a 10 per cent loss between 2018 and 2019 (KEK, 2019). E-paper sales and payment models in the online arena are still of low economic relevance.
The availability of a large number of newspaper editions is supported by a system of press wholesalers with the features of price maintenance, territorial protection, obligation to contract, and right of return.
The most important online news websites are bild.de (19.25% market share), Spiegel online (9.82%) (which has merged with Der Spiegel to form one brand), and focus online (7.56%). They sum up to a low CR3 of 0.36.
Transparency in the media market is protected by an independent commission (KEK Commission for Settling of Concentration in the Media Market), regular refined reports of press ownership (Röper, 2016, 2018), and the publication obligation of the press concentration law.
However, media concentration is not fully considered in terms of media cross-ownership. Cross-ownership between broadcasters of nationwide television and those publishing groups active in the daily newspaper market exists at Bertelsmann/Gruner + Jahr, Axel Springer Verlag, DvH Media, Bauer Media, and DuMont. These are only reported by KEK, but not covered by the media concentration law.
With respect to cross-ownership between traditional and online media, media companies can be classified as follows:
- private German television groups ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE and Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, whose online portfolios mainly comprise transferred television channel brands, video-on-demand platforms, video portals, and games portals;
- major publishers that are broadly diversified on the Internet, such as Axel Springer, Hubert Burda Media Holding, and Holtzbrinck, which have nearly all types of Internet offerings in their portfolios, in addition to transferred print brands;
- major German publishing houses that focus on the online transformation of their strong journalistic print brands (e.g., Der Spiegel, Gruner + Jahr);
- and typical regional newspaper publishers or publishing groups, which usually only diversify into Internet offerings with a regional reference and classified advertising cooperation (see Indicator E2 – Media ownership concentration regional (local) level).
Per the legislation currently in force, the Commission on Concentration in the Media Sector (KEK) is not competent to deal with concentration issues in the online sector. Nevertheless, KEK dealt in detail with the future of media concentration law in the last Concentration Report and emphasised the need for the timely introduction of an overall opinion market model and a new media concentration law designed independently of broadcasting (KEK, 2019).
