Rain of money for ARD and ZDF: Fee payers ensure record income

Never before have the fee payers brought such high revenues to the public broadcasters: 8.57 billion euros flowed into the coffers of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandfunk last year. The lion’s share of the broadcasting fee went to the ARD broadcasters, who were able to look forward to 5.96 billion euros.

Broadcasting fee: record income for ARD and ZDF

The public broadcasters set a new record last year: they were able to Income of 8.57 billion euros be achieved. This corresponds to an increase of 1.73 percent compared to the previous year. Of the record sum, 5.96 billion euros went to the ARD broadcasters, almost 2.2 billion euros to ZDF and a good 250 million euros to Deutschlandradio. The state media authorities received 162 million euros.

As logical main reason for the lavish flow of money the increase in the license fee to EUR 18.36 per month and household is mentioned. The increase has been in effect since August 2021 and was valid all year round for the first time in 2022. The number of contribution accounts rose last year from 45.7 to almost 46 million, the number of registered apartments from 39.7 to almost 40 million.

The number of Persons who are exempt from broadcasting fees for social reasons went back. At the end of 2022, it was 2.43 million and thus around 2.4 percent below the value of 2021. According to the contribution service, the decline follows the trend on the German labor market, where the number of recipients of unemployment benefit II, which accounts for around two thirds of those exempted , has also fallen.

This is how expensive broadcasting in Germany really is:

Broadcasting fee: Dunning procedure increased slightly

After the contribution arrears in the dunning procedure had fallen to the lowest level since the introduction of the broadcasting contribution in 2021, they were back to around the level of 2020 in 2022. As of December 31, around 7 percent of the contributors are in arrears (Source: contribution service).