'Dumbing Down' as Content Portfolio Strategy - A Comparison of Public and Private TV Broadcasting in Germany

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: 1.6, Cologne Business School Köln, language: English, abstract: Eine von Marcel Reich-Ranicki inspirierte Analyse der aktuellen Fernsehlandschaft in Deutschland. Ziel der Arbeit ist es festzustellen, ob und in welchem Umfang das Fernsehen die Gesellschaft verdummt. Des Weiteren enthält die Arbeit einen Vergleich zwischen öffentlichem und privatem Fernsehen, welche in einer Fallstudie am Beispiel von ZDF und RTL verdeutlicht wird. [...]"I listened to the entire festivity and I was appalled. There were small television excerpts being offered with some clowns, some nonsense, idiocy, filth, complete filth.This is what is being broadcasted in Germany each day. The directors say that the audience wishes so, as if the audience was a crowd of idiots." On October 11th, 2008, German literature critic Marcel Reich Ranicki rejected the German Television Prize honouring him for his lifetime achievement. In front of rolling cameras, Ranicki made his standpoint very clear that he finds the current television landscape rubbish and dull.His words are the result of 25 years of private televisual content development in Germany. Today's media environment has changed drastically. Each day we find more and more TV programmes which are designed for an audience that demands no intellectual work and wants to be entertained. This matter of entertainment has exclusively formed the television networks' programming strategies concerning their content. Consequently, the offer of daily soaps ("GZSZ"), reality TV ("Big Brother", "Dschungelcamp") and game/casting shows ("Deutschland sucht den Superstar") has risen, while the offer of classical formats such as fiction film, documentaries and sophisticated programmes ("Das literarische Quartett") has decreased.