By Michael Sauerbier
The RBB is no longer without a leader! Four weeks after the scandal director Patricia Schlesinger (61) was kicked out, the broadcasting council elected a new woman to head the station: with 16 yes votes to 3 no votes (one abstention), the supervisors appointed WDR administrative director Katrin Vernau (49 ) in the second ballot for the interim director for a maximum of one year. On Tuesday evening, the manager introduced herself to the broadcasting councils in a video conference.
In the first ballot, the WDR manager failed, only getting 12 yes votes. 14 were necessary.
Vernau was the only candidate
It shouldn’t be in any newspaper on Wednesday. It was not until 9 p.m. that the 30 RBB broadcasting councils joined forces for a confidential Internet conference on Tuesday evening. 19 hours before the election of the new director for the teetering scandal broadcaster.
The representatives of associations and parties from Berlin and Brandenburg had learned from the newspaper who they should elect as RBB transitional boss on Wednesday afternoon: Katrin Vernau (49), economist and administrative director of WDR since 2015.
She is the right hand of ARD boss Tom Buhrow. He wants to leave her at RBB for the year, says Vernau, “a signal that WDR sends to make it clear: he is helping to solve the crisis. This not only damages the RBB, but the entire system!”
A system rescuer is to follow the system cracker Patricia Schlesinger.
Time is running out. RBB has been without a leader since Protz and Kungel director Patricia Schlesinger was kicked out at the beginning of August. “It’s slowly getting down to business,” warned business representative Christian Amsinck and urged everyone to hurry: “Tomorrow we should see that we get a tour for a year.” An invitation to tender takes too much time.
Patricia Schlesinger had to go Photo: dpa/picture-alliance
After a short, heated argument about the lack of selection, Vernau is allowed to give her application speech. From her Cologne WDR office, in Swabian dialect: “I’m 49 years old, an economist and did my doctorate in Potsdam.” That sounds like rootedness in the region. But when asked, Vernau has to admit: she only lived and worked in the West: Ulm, Hamburg and Cologne.
disappointment all around. Brandenburg SPD politician Erik Stohn: “My state government wants a director with an East German biography!” Will she move if she is elected? Vernau: “I have to think about that. That doesn’t make any sense for twelve months.” But: “I can imagine that I’ll apply to be artistic director afterwards – if things go well.” Oha!
But how ticks and what does the new boss want?
Vernau presents as an experienced top manager “with 16 years of experience in the top management level. I’ve always been the commercial manager.” The mistress of numbers, a chief accountant.
“In Ulm I created the strategy and structural development,” she lists, “in Hamburg an SAP project when the university was no longer able to provide financial accountability.” In Cologne, she has “500 jobs in the WDR -Administration dismantled.”
Save, delete, restructure. Vernau speaks of stakeholder and change management, of her “strategy experience with strong analytical skills”. She learned that as a management consultant.
Vernau doesn’t get on very well with employees and their unions. Verdi Broadcasting Councilor Bernd Lammel: “I did not receive any congratulatory telegrams from my colleagues in Düsseldorf for your candidacy.” Vernau admits that she caused the WDR collective bargaining negotiations to fail. Because of a home office subsidy of 250 euros: “We can pay that once, but not every month!”
Vernau, on the other hand, doesn’t find bonus payments for the bosses “not bad. But that they were kept secret.” Then she admits: “I was responsible for the management of the film house in downtown Cologne.” The costs had exploded from 80 million to a quarter billion. Vernau meekly: “It could have been done cheaper. The BILD will write again and again that we have a Protz project there.”
Vernau wants to “put the RBB Protzbau” planned by Schlesinger, the “Digital Media House”, “to the test”. The station bosses too. There was transparency “only in slices”. From “a management that is not seriously interested in clarification”. Vernau: “I noticed that with anger, disappointment and frustration. I thought: does that never end?” Now she wants to see “whether the right people are in the right place”.
After an hour and a half, Vernau has apparently convinced most of the broadcasting councils. Even the two RBB staff representatives. Because the new one wants to include permanent and freelance employees in the staff council. Other council members remained skeptical to negative. “Now the WDR rides in here,” said the Brandenburg CDU broadcasting councilor Ingo Senftleben (48), “to bring our East German RBB back on track.”