German TV licence fee to remain stable

The German licence fee for public television and radio will remain unchanged at €17.98 ($US23) per month until 2016, rapidtvnews.com reports.

This decision was announced by federal licence fee commission (KEF) during the presentation of its latest report.

In its calculation, KEF acknowledges that public broadcasters ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio would require additional funding of around €304 million($US391million) in total in the period between 2013 and 2016.

However, the commission says that a reliable prognosis of the licence fee income following the transition to the new household payment system wasn’t possible; therefore it was decided to keep the fee at its current level.

As part of the new fee collection system, which will be implemented on 1 January 2013, each German household will have to pay the full amount of the licence fee – independently of the presence, kind and number of reception devices. It is currently unclear which effect this will have on the licence fee income.