About a year after the scandal became known on Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), the former deputy spokeswoman for the federal government, Ulrike Demmer, was elected as the only remaining candidate for the new director. After several ballots in Potsdam, the broadcasting council of the ARD station voted for the 50-year-old to succeed interim boss Katrin Vernau. She will take office by September 15 at the latest.
RBB announced that Demmer was elected with the necessary two-thirds majority of 24 members of the Broadcasting Council present. There were 16 yes votes. The 30-strong Broadcasting Council, which was not all present, is one of the two control bodies of the public RBB. Former Vodafone manager Heide Baumann, who initially stood as an opposing candidate, withdrew her candidacy after two ballots.
Demmer, who was elected for a five-year term, has to implement a 49 million savings program and continue to work through the consequences of the scandal surrounding allegations of nepotism against ex-director Patricia Schlesinger. It is important to strengthen the scratched image of the station again.
Too close to politics?
From 2016 to 2021, Demmer was deputy spokeswoman for Angela Merkel’s (CDU) past black-red federal government and was then sent to the circle of government spokesmen by the SPD side. When asked that her government job could raise suspicions that public service broadcasting and politics could be too closely linked, Demmer referred to her predominantly professional career in the media. Among other things, she was a journalist for “Spiegel”, ZDF and also for Radioeins at RBB.
“I was a journalist for 20 years beforehand, I don’t have a party book, I never had one,” the 50-year-old told journalists after the election. “I found it a very enriching trip to the other side, I learned a lot there and I don’t regret it in that respect, but I definitely stand for critical and independent journalism. The RBB is non-state and independent and should also report non-state and independently. That will remain so with me as artistic director.”
Shrinking list of candidates
The election was preceded by a peculiar fuss over the list of candidates, and the entire application process increasingly became a debate about how high top salaries in public service broadcasting should be.
Before Heide Baumann on Friday, two other applicants had already withdrawn. Initially, Juliane Leopold, the editor-in-chief of digital news from ARD-aktuell (“Tagesschau”, “Tagesthemen”), had canceled.
One day before the election, the program director of Radio Bremen, Jan Weyrauch, surprisingly gave up his ambitions. He feared that after his possible election there would have been no agreement in negotiations on the director’s contract, even if he had been willing to accept compromises. The application process was accompanied by a debate on plans in the board of directors to significantly reduce top salaries in the future. Applicants were told the same thing.
It was (also) about the salary
Weyrauch also informed the German Press Agency on Thursday about his withdrawal: “During the process, however, ideas about the salary range of the director’s contract were brought into play, in which I also, for strategic reasons, for the subsequent effect on the entire salary structure in the RBB, with all due understanding for cannot keep up with the careful and economical use of contribution money.”
When asked about this, Demmer said after the election: “Everyone in the house is saving, really all areas. And it seems to me that it is an important signal that a signal is also sent internally and externally to the director’s salary. In this respect, I am confident that we will come to an agreement.”
If the RBB board of directors, as the supervisory body, later negotiates the contract with the director and carries out his considerations, there could be a significant reduction in the director’s salary in the entire ARD comparison. The committee made it clear in May that it wanted to lower top salaries – the whole thing is not yet set in stone. Chairman of the Board of Directors Benjamin Ehlers even named a corridor that he could personally imagine: between 180,000 euros and 230,000 euros. It would be the lowest director’s salary in all of public service broadcasting.
Immediately before the election, the staff council and the freelance representatives of the ARD broadcaster called for a new application process against the background of Leopold and Weyrauch’s withdrawals. An orderly election procedure could no longer be brought to an end, the two representations announced. The election was preceded by an hour-long debate.
Broadcaster in a state of emergency
When WDR manager Vernau from Cologne took over the post as interim boss in autumn 2022, she found RBB in a state of emergency. The medium-sized ARD broadcaster with more than 3,000 employees and an annual broadcasting contribution budget of almost 450 million euros fell into a deep crisis in the summer of 2022 when allegations against the broadcaster boss Schlesinger, who was later fired without notice, and the resigned head of the RBB supervisory board, Wolf -Dieter Wolf, both rejected. The public prosecutor’s office in Berlin is still investigating, so long as the presumption of innocence applies.
Vernau himself had not applied for the position of director and was therefore not subsequently included on the list of candidates. Although she had not applied, she made it clear that she would continue in the post.
