Germany is one of the largest newspaper markets in Europe. Access to news media is available nationwide and in all areas. In 2020, 327 paid-for dailies were available to German readers with 1,452 local editions and a printed total of 13.52 million copies. Furthermore, 17 printed weeklies with an average of 1.61 editions and 6 Sunday papers with an average of 1.74 editions were distributed. The number of daily papers per 1,000 residents is 231 printed papers – one of the highest figures in Europe (BDZV, 2020). Germany has the densest distribution network in the world, with 1.4 single-sale unit per 1,000 residents and about 116,000 retailers.
During the first quarter of 2020, 14.57 million newspaper copies (dailies, weeklies, Sunday papers) were sold on average every day, of which 1.65 million were e-papers (IVW, 2020). Compared to 2019, print-copy sales decreased by 4.75 per cent, whereas e-paper sales increased by 13.84 per cent.
However, a closer look at the newspaper variety per district reveals the high and rising media concentration in Germany (see Indicators E1 – Media ownership concentration national level & E2 – Media ownership concentration regional (local) level). Newspaper sales in Germany are still mainly based on subscription, particularly at the local and regional level, with 88.6 per cent subscription of local and regional newspapers compared with 11.3 per cent of single-copy sales.
Every newspaper serves its readers with online editions. Subscription, Sunday, and weekly papers reach a market share of roughly 50 per cent for local or regional papers, and up to 73 per cent for national papers with their online editions (BDZV, 2020).
There are five national dailies (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Tageszeitung, Die Welt), a daily economic paper (Handelsblatt), and a large number of regional or local dailies. Table 1 shows the top seven sold papers in 2018 and 2019.
During the last decade, differentiation took place at the local level, with so-called hyperlocal journalism enterprises. Highly committed small initiatives established news media voluntarily with some small revenues from advertising to serve their urban quarter.
Taking a look at broadcasting, the federal political structure of Germany is mirrored in the media system. National law stipulates that every citizen shall have access to public television and radio. For this reason, almost every Bundesland [Federal State] or major communication area, respectively, has its own publicly run radio and television regional stations, which are available nationwide via DVB-T2. The biggest public service broadcaster ARD runs nine regional television stations, plus one nationwide television programme. ZDF runs a nationwide television-only programme. Both established a variety of special interest channels, like the online-only channel funk, distributed via YouTube. Deutschlandfunk is a nationwide public service radio network with three different programmes. In addition, commercial broadcasters like RTL are available nationwide. A complete supply of radio programmes is hence ensured. In 2018, a total of 688 broadcasters served the public, of which 273 were commercial radio and 294 were television programmes. Public service media offers comprise 57 radio stations and 20 television channels (Goldmedia AG, 2019: 12).
The technical reach of the five biggest television stations is nearly 100 per cent: 98 per cent (both ARD and ZDF) for public broadcasting services, and 96.4 per cent (RTL), 95.8 per cent (Sat1), and 95.6 per cent (Pro7) for commercial stations (ARD-Werbung, 2019: 4–5). There are 38.8 million television-owning households (ARD-Werbung, 2019: 4–5). How do they access television? About half receive television via cable (15.5 million), some more via satellite (17.14 million), and only 1.3 million via terrestrial networks. To sum up the different figures, television is fully accessible all over Germany.
90 per cent of all German households have a personal computer and 77.9 per cent own a smartphone (DeStatis, 2020b), which are both technical prerequisites for access to the Internet. At the end of 2018, about 88 per cent of German households had broadband access of at least 50 MBs (BMVI, 2018). A lower density of Internet penetration is still observed for parts of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen-Anhalt, but this region also has a low population density (BMVI, 2018: 21, 24).
