ARD consists of nine regional broadcasting stations operating under German state law. These are: Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), Hessischer Rundfunk (HR), Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), Radio Bremen (RB), Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), Saarländischer Rundfunk (SR), Südwestrundfunk (SWR) and Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). Altogether, they provide more than 60 radio and 17 television channels and numerous Internet services. The 10th member is Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), which offers multimedia news and information in 30 languages. DW represents ARD within the ABU.
Radio is operated by each ARD member under state law and distributed in its respective region. DeutschlandRadio, an ARD-ZDF collaboration, offers two nationwide radio channels. The nine ARD regional members jointly operate its flagship national TV channel “Das Erste”. Additionally, eight regional TV channels are produced independently by the respective members. Germany’s international broadcaster DW produces and distributes multimedia content in 32 languages.
ARD also provides, together with ZDF, special interest programmes such as KI.KA (Children), Phoenix (current affairs and documentaries), 3Sat (culture) and Arte (European culture). Three digital-only channels complement ARD’s overall TV operations, which are distributed free-to-air on all platforms. The budget of ARD comes primarily from the licence fees, which totalled about €5.38 billion in 2010. Deutsche Welle is funded by tax revenue