Germany funds ARD and ZDF mainly through the Rundfunkbeitrag, a flat monthly charge on every household. It does not matter whether the household owns a television. The Hollywood Reporter put the fee at €18.36 a month in 2024, and said it supplies the bulk of the public broadcasters’ money.
Why owning a set no longer matters
The household charge arrived in 2013. It replaced the old GEZ fee, which Germans paid per device, and which relied on people declaring what they owned. Under that system inspectors could patrol door to door. The new charge is compulsory, so nobody can avoid it. In 2015 the Guardian reported the fee as €17.98 a month.
Some people pay less or nothing. Low-income families and students can be exempt, and disabled people can apply for a reduced rate, which the Guardian gave as €5.99 in 2015.
Businesses pay too, on a scale set by headcount. The Guardian’s examples were a bakery and a hair salon: every company pays, however small.
How much money that raises
In 2015 the Guardian put annual fee income at about €7.6bn. Advertising brought in roughly €500m more, because the public channels also carry commercials. That gave Germany one of the largest public broadcasting budgets in the world.
The money pays for ARD and ZDF nationally, plus a long list of regional TV and radio stations. Viewers use them. The Guardian found ZDF and Das Erste, ARD’s main channel, had the largest audience shares in 2015, at about 13% and 12.5%.
Why the fee is now a political fight
Germany’s far-right AfD wants the fee abolished, and accuses ARD and ZDF of acting as left-wing propaganda for the state. After the party’s gains in three eastern state elections in 2024, some in the industry feared pressure to defund the system.
The film and TV guilds answered with an open letter. They said only 44% of fee revenue went on programmes, and asked for at least half the budget to go there. They want that floor written into the media state treaty that governs how the fee is set. Their argument is that better shows are the fee’s best defence.
