BERLIN — The leaders of Germany’s 16 states agreed on Thursday to merge the digital operations of the country’s two national public broadcasters, ARD and ZDF, into a single streaming platform by 2029, the most significant restructuring of German public television since ZDF was founded in 1961.
The agreement, reached after two days of negotiations in Berlin, keeps the two broadcasters as separate institutions with separate television channels, a point on which several states had insisted, but combines their streaming services, technology, and archives under a new joint entity with a single app and a single login. It also commits the broadcasters to cutting 20 percent of their combined 70 linear channels and radio stations by 2030 and freezes the household broadcasting fee, currently 18.36 euros a month, through 2028.
“We have a public broadcasting system that was designed for a world of three channels and is being paid for by a world of three hundred,” said Katrin Hollweg, the minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate, who led the negotiations on behalf of the states. “This is not the end of reform. It is the first time in a generation that reform has actually happened.”
German public broadcasting is the largest in the world by budget, with combined annual revenue of about 9 billion euros, about $9.7 billion, and has been under pressure for a decade from an alliance of fiscal conservatives, who object to the cost, and younger viewers, who increasingly do not watch it. ARD’s and ZDF’s combined linear audience share has fallen to about 40 percent, from 55 percent in 2010, while the median viewer of their main evening news programs is over 65. The two broadcasters have run separate streaming services since the 2010s, with overlapping content and, until last year, no shared search.
The merger of the digital arms has been resisted by both institutions, which have argued that competition between them improves quality, and by the states that host ARD’s nine regional broadcasters, which fear a loss of regional programming. The agreement guarantees a minimum of regional content on the joint platform and gives the regional broadcasters seats on its board, concessions that Ms. Hollweg said had been “the price of a deal.”
Critics on both sides were quick to say the deal did not go far enough. The Taxpayers’ Federation, which has campaigned for a single national broadcaster, called the agreement “a reorganization of the deck chairs.” The journalists’ union DJV warned that the channel cuts would cost up to 3,000 jobs and said the fee freeze amounted to a real-terms cut. A spokesman for ZDF said the broadcaster would “implement the decision constructively.”
Media analysts said the significance of the deal lay less in its details than in the fact that it existed. “Every attempt to reform this system for 20 years has died in a conference room,” said Prof. Ulrich Sandner, who studies media policy at the University of Mainz. “This one came out alive. That is the news.”
The agreement must be ratified by all 16 state parliaments, a process expected to take until next summer. Two states, Bavaria and Saxony, have indicated they will seek amendments. Ms. Hollweg said she was “confident, but not relaxed.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 2 of the European edition with the headline: Germany’s States Agree to Merge Public Broadcasters’ Digital Arms, Stopping Short of a Single Network.
