Media law report: Conversion of radio station Cosmo inadmissible

Accordingly, the intended profile of 1Live Street does not meet the requirements that the WDR law imposes on the station. This stipulates that the institution must organize a radio program that is “primarily dedicated to topics relating to intercultural coexistence”.

According to WDR, the new program 1Live Street, which is intended to be the successor to Cosmo, will be aimed at a young, culturally diverse, urban-oriented target group and will focus on the music genre hip-hop.

Problematic realignment with hip-hop

The expert sees the focus on a younger target group in particular as a problem because, unlike other broadcasters, the law does not limit intercultural radio to specific age groups.

Gersdorf also considers the focus on hip-hop as the dominant music genre for 1Live Street to be legally problematic because it is aimed primarily at a younger audience. WDR’s announcement that it would be more inclusive of migrant perspectives across all programs in the future still does not allow the station to transform Cosmo in this way.

At the beginning of June, the WDR broadcasting council approved the plans for the new radio profile with a narrow majority. The Cosmo channel, including its associated social media presence, will cease to exist from April 2027. WDR is primarily responsible for the Cosmo program, in which the broadcasters RBB and Radio Bremen also participate. The RBB wants to mix its content with Radio 3 in the future.

Expert Gersdorf, who has held the chair for constitutional and administrative law as well as media law at the University of Leipzig for ten years, sees the plans for 1Live Street as contradicting the mandate to offer an interculturally oriented program.

If the legislature has prescribed a cultural channel, a broadcaster cannot convert it into a sports program: “The program autonomy only develops within the framework of the constitutionally prescribed mandate and determined by the legislature and does not give the right to (unauthorized) reorganization of the mandate,” says Gersdorf.

WDR contradicts the report

If there is actually a violation of the WDR law, the North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister is obliged to take action against it. It is also possible that those paying broadcasting fees could sue.

The WDR contradicts the assessment of a legal opinion, according to which the conversion of the multicultural radio station Cosmo into a program for young hip-hop fans violates the WDR law. The broadcaster explained on Monday that WDR can design its offers freely and target specific target groups. “This also applies to Cosmo, as the legislature has not defined a target group for the offer.”

An interpretation of the law, as the media lawyer Hubertus Gersdorf made in his report, would, in the WDR’s opinion, lead to an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of programming.

Managing director Elena Kountidou commented on the report for the New German Media Makers in a press release: “What the WDR is planning is not a reform step, but rather illegal. Cosmo is firmly anchored in law. We call on the WDR broadcasting council to revise its decision and the ARD directors to further expand Cosmo as a multilingual, innovative offer for a diverse society.”

Further steps regarding the legal action in North Rhine-Westphalia, which the report shows, are being examined, Kountidou also wrote in an email to the Tagesspiegel.

Since it became known, the planned end of Cosmo has attracted a lot of criticism from politics and civil society. In mid-June, 500 organizations wrote an open letter to those responsible and emphasized the importance of Cosmo for the migrant community.

The German Music Council positions itself particularly clearly. Secretary General Antje Valentin emphasized that migrant voices and perspectives had a right to be present on public broadcasting.

In protest, the electronic duo Mouse on Mars returned the “1LIVE crown” they won in 2000 to WDR. The musicians described the winding up of Cosmo as a “devastating step backwards in times of reactionary thinking” and as a sign against cosmopolitanism.