Finances

The payments are collected by an agency specifically set up for this purpose by the public service media. Since 2013, the reformed broadcasting contribution (Rundfunkbeitrag) is generally levied on places of residence and places of work. The details of who has to pay and how much are laid down in the federal states’ Inter-State Treaties on media. The relevant calculation is made by an independent expert commission (KEF), which regularly examines the financial needs of the public media organisations and plays a key role in Germany’s system of funding public broadcasting. KEF’s authority in assessing adequate fee levels has been upheld by the Federal Constitutional Court: In order to minimise the risk of political influence on broadcasters by way of economic pressure, the 16  federal states have only very limited scope to ignore KEF’s recommendation. The Länder parliaments jointly set the fee by law for a period of usually four years. The revenue is then shared between ZDF, the regional member broadcasters of the public media association ARD and the national radio station Deutschland radio. From the standard annual broadcasting fee of 220.32 euros as paid by most households (18.36 euros per month since August 2021), ZDF receives a share of 56.28 euros.  

Advertising and sponsorship are additional sources of funding. However, special advertising regulations apply to ZDF as a public broadcaster: Commercials are legally restricted to a maximum of twenty minutes per day from Monday to Saturday, and cannot be broadcast after 8 pm or on Sundays and public holidays. In comparison, advertising rules are more liberal for our commercial competitors: They are permitted to fill up to twenty per cent of each programme hour with advertising, which can add up to more than four hours per day. Our annual budget amounts to a total of roughly 2.500 million euros.