By Oskar Luis Bender and Maximilian Both
You just can’t get enough! The radio contribution knows only one direction: upwards!
The ARD bosses around director Kai Gniffke (62) are secretly planning to raise the radio contribution to up to 25.19 euros a month!
This emerges from internal strategy papers that “Business Insider“ are present. Accordingly, they are planning an increase of up to 6.83 euros for the period from 2025 to 2028.
That’s over a third more.
Every household in Germany currently has to pay 18.36 euros a month for ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio.
If you add it all up, that already adds up to a mega-sum: This year, the combined budget of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio is expected to be over 10 billion euros – a record!
This was calculated by the Cologne Institute for Media and Communication Policy (IfM).
Nevertheless, the public broadcasters do not get enough. The German Association of Journalists (DJV) also recently called for an increase in the broadcasting fee.
The broadcasting fees were only raised in 2021: from 17.50 to 18.36 euros – a strong gulp from the bottle. If you want to use the “ARD Plus” streaming service, you have to shell out another 4.99 per month. The current contribution period runs until the end of 2024.
Our neighbors from Austria show that it also works in the other direction: there, the fee for the ORF will drop from 22.50 euros to 15 euros in the future. A third less.