Teutons slog it out for o'seas aud
Channel D doubled programming in U.S.
German TV is backed by public overseas broadcaster Deutsche Welle, which has aired TV programs in German and other languages worldwide for 10 years.
Deutsche Welle has joined forces with pubcaster ARD and ZDF to create German TV's "best-of" sked.
In December, the partners signed a deal with Paris-based satellite transmission provider GlobeCast. German TV will start airing March 1 in the U.S. as a pay channel for a monthly subscription fee.
"We also intend to go for the cable grids serving large cities on the East Coast," says Wolfgang Krueger, German TV's managing director.
Attracting eyeballs
He intends to launch an aggressive marketing campaign to reach German groups, as the ethnic core isn't as large as other nationalities in the U.S.
Its pay TV rival Channel D has been on the air in the U.S. since September and has already doubled its programming from a loop of six hours over two days, to 12 hours.
Channel D is keen to please its tiny subscriber-base of 700. "Upping programming will certainly cost extra, but we are eager to please, as our business is very much based on word of mouth," says program director Karl-Otto Saur.
Channel D is closer to the "best of" package of programs because its content stems from pubcasters and commercial webs.
Deutsche Welle stopped ARD and ZDF from providing programs, "so now I'm buying right from the producers," Saur says. These include virtually all TV movies and miniseries.
Six private partners, including latenight talkshow host Harald Schmidt, set up Channel D. The web has a budget of DM2 million ($910,000), but might need twice that to reach its targeted 12,000 viewers, Saur says. That's still small change in comparison with the $18 million approved by the government for German TV for the next four years.
After launching in the U.S., both contenders intend to go for viewers in Canada and South America. With an estimated 1.5 million German speakers, the market might be big enough to support both.
