German public broadcasters bullied over Web content
Found on Ars Technica on Thursday, 04 June 2009
If you like the Web content offered by German public broadcasters ZDF and ARD, you can thank the German newspaper industry for the upcoming reduction in offerings. Because of a loud outcry over unfair competition, public broadcasters have agreed to reduce the amount of stuff they put online, as well as the amount of time it stays online.
But, in the case of German newspapers, they would rather convince public broadcasters to take down their offerings than refit their business models to more effectively compete.
Well, what a nice bit of journalism Mrs Jacqui Cheng. Thoroughly investigated. Not. In fact, ARD and ZDF are public broadcasters who live from some sort of tax everybody owning TV, Radio or Internet access has to pay, no matter if that person accesses their content or not. After they started providing online content, they successfully lobbied for an extension of the tax to cover Internet access, although it would be so trivial to put a membership system in place (but hey, that generates less revenue). So, yes, it is unfair because they are funded by the government and don't have to care about how to make any money; they simply bill everybody.