More deeply informed and better heard: Deutschlandfunk is restructuring its program

In addition to the director Stefan Raue and the new Deutschlandfunk editor-in-chief Susanne Schwarzbach, who has been in office for three months, it is above all the program director Jona Teichmann and Deutschlandfunk head of culture Matthias Gierth who explain what will change in the future.

Teichmann says: “Deutschlandfunk remains what it is: the leading journalistic medium with depth, analysis and classification. An offer for collective reflection that surprises and invites you to continue listening. With the reform we are ensuring that we can continue to live up to this claim in the future.”

And head of culture Gierth adds: “Even if the listener numbers for Deutschlandfunk have been very good for years, we cannot close our eyes to the reality: many of our listeners are older, we also have to make high-quality, attractive programs for future generations.”

There was no need to undertake this reform: the number of listeners is actually good, according to current media analysis, more than 2.52 million people listen to Deutschlandfunk every day during the week, and the finances are also stable. Reference is made to the requirements of the state reform treaty, which focus on the importance of exchange with the audience, on digitalization and on younger listeners.

And these young people in particular are probably the ones who should be offered an information offering that works immediately, at the expense of the introduced magazines that structure the day in small parts, which will no longer be available in the future.

Such as “Day after Day – from Religion and Society”, such as the “Book Market”, “Tonart”, “Economy at Midday”, “Research Current”, “Europe Today”, the educational magazine “Campus and Career” and the program “Germany Today”. Instead, there should be “information routes” during the day, which are called “information in the morning” or “information at midday” or “information in the evening”, starting an hour later in the morning, from 6 a.m., earlier in the evening, from 5 p.m.

Even more information and background

In the evenings there will also be “Background” and another new format called “In Dialogue”, in which direct contact with the audience will be sought on a current topic for two hours. Of course, attempts are being made to shift the program towards podcasts in order to do justice to the changing listening habits that are not least due to digitalization.

The specialist editorial teams should work on all of these programs, even in competition with one another in terms of the value and attractiveness of the topics.

The loss of the daily “book market” is to be compensated for by a weekly, longer “book salon”, probably on Thursday evenings. In general, they are planning a daily cultural program from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., “Culture Current,” which could also include literary topics and book reviews. The same applies to the knowledge area: a one-hour “Knowledge Current” program every day.

Weeks before the official announcement, the accusation of “hearability” was already being raised. Or that Deutschlandfunk is in the process of becoming a “sideline radio” (“FAZ”), i.e. Dudelfunk, like a very large part of the rest of the radio waves, not least the ARD.

Accusation of audibility

Jona Teichmann strictly rejected this accusation on Thursday morning. She doesn’t see that “we are saying goodbye to specialist journalism, the opposite is the case.” A good 200 of the station’s editors worked on the new program schedule, and the station continues to focus on “clear priorities”, for example the news every hour, which has now been extended to ten minutes.

It’s like most reforms: whoever initiated and decided on them argues them forward and sees the future shining in bright colors, just like the four grandees of the station. How much there was talk this Thursday about “depth”, about “expertise”, about “topicality, perspective and debates”. Those who are less involved are more than skeptical: the station’s long-established employees and editors are certainly worried. You have to adapt to completely changed (work) structures.

And how the listeners will accept the new offer is, as always with such ventures, initially a question mark. There is already a petition against the reform, but only around 4,700 people have signed it so far, compared to the two to two and a half million listeners per day. The flexibility on the listener side may be greater than expected.

There is rarely anything wrong with change, and the songs of doom can still be heard from November 30th.