German TV in front of a revolution?

German TV in front of a revolution?

The start of Netflix in Germany could change the whole TV Culture / Big TV-Stations aren’t scared

Since the last September the American on-demand-service Netflix is available in Germany. Netflix could be the first on-demand-service with success in the Central-European country. Competitors like Watchever, Maxdome or Sky Snap couldn’t succeed till now.  The old German regular TV-Stations don’t fear the new service, because they don’t see an issue in the on-demand-function of the new competitor. The only strength of Netflix which fears the old German TV-Stations is the quality of the program. After seven months with the service you can already see that Netflix has influenced the German TV. The deciding role how the German TV will develop is played by the youth.

Television has once altered our world. It is a part of the everyday life. In Germany the TV-set even schedules a big time of the everyday life. The most favorite TV crime series “Tatort”, watched every Sunday by over three million people, is not only a TV-series, it also a sign for the end of the weekend. The same phenomenon you can watch at the German public newscast “Tagessschau.” It is the most watched newscast whole over Europe. It is shown every day at 8pm, the perfect time between a regular German family-dinner and the start of the night.  Because of this big amount of audiences the traditional German private and public TV-stations don’t fear the new competitor. 

“We don’t fear in front of Netflix”, says ARD-chairman Lutz Marmor to focus-online. Against the strengths of his TV-channel, regionality and comprehensive foreign reporting, the new American on-demand-service couldn’t be successful, so Marmor further. The same opinion shares his colleague Guillaume de Posch, chairman of the biggest private German TV-station RTL.  “We don’t see a big influence in our work”, is Posch cited in the Austrian newspaper kurier.at. The RTL-chairman only sees an influence for the German Pay-TV-Sector. “I expect a prize-war in this market sector”, describes Posch his expectations. The RTL-chairman is right. With the establishment of Netflix the prizes for exclusive rights for movies in Germany grows. “With the success in the whole world Netflix has a big amount of money”, says the Nico Jurran an author of the computer-newspapper c´t. But the financial strength of Netflix isn’t the only issue. The american streaming-service is able to produce his own TV-shows. The series “Orange is the new black” and “House of Cards” had success all around the world. The streaming-service got 31 Emmy-Nominees in the last year. “That’s impossible for every german TV-Company”, says Jurran. And this fact is the biggest issue for the german TV-Landscape and his especially his culture: The quality of Netflix. 

With his high-quality TV-Shows no TV-Channel will match this quality in the next years. So is it possible that the most germans will decide to watch their series with this streaming-service? In my eyes the deciding role will be played by the youth. Already more than a quarter of the German 14-29 year-old is using a streaming-service in the internet and more than the half of the respondents of the biggest German Online-Study said that they already use the media libraries of the german TV-Channel. It is a clear fact the most of the TV in the future will be seen in the internet. Here you can decide when, what and how you want to see your favorite series. You can watch that every big german TV-stations reacts to this trend. Next to the public stations like ARD and ZDF also the private channels like ProSieben and RTL made big investments into their online media libraries.

But only with investments into their online-offer the traditional TV won´t win the challenge against Netflix. They real thing they need to deal with is the quality. If they don’t succeed, they German TV-Culture could change complete. Of course the channels are over years influenced by American series. Series like Baywatch, How I met your Mother and movies like Titanic or James Bond had they success especially in the private sector. But the big german movies always succeed in the public channels with the old generation. ARD and ZDF, the biggest german public channels, need to focus on the youth, if they want to pass against competitors like Netflix. The reaction of the ARD-chairman Marmor is a bad sign. He just trusts in his regionality and comprehensive foreign reporting, but not in the quality of his own productions. But if the german doesn’t want to get conquered by american ideas, they need to trust in their own.  The first reactions of the new competitor are obvious. The ARD made a first series, which will first be shown in the Internet and afterword in the TV with famous german actors like Moritz Bleibtreu. 

The establishment of the Netflix isn’t something the german should fear. It is the biggest chance for innovations and new ideas. They need to succeed, because the youth puts the stations under pressure. If they loose more than six century of german TV-Culture are maybe blown away.