The national broadcasters from Switzerland, Austria and Germany have sealed a deal of collaboration which will include a special collaboration for Eurovision 2024 as was the case at this year’s ESC edition.

SRF (Switzerland), ARD (Gemrmany) and ORF (Austria) have had a special meeting in Munich recently where they sealed a deal of cooperation and collaboration worth 140 million Euros.  This will include a collaboration for Eurovision 2024 very much in the style of the collaboration the broadcasters entailed at this year’s Eurovision edition in Liverpool,  where a special countdown show was presented by German presenter Barbara Schöneberger on the night of the 2023 Eurovision Grand Final which was broadcast live in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

The co-production conference was hosted by Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) and the ARD program directorate.

The SRF press release reads:

The public broadcasters from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, ARD, ORF and SRF, want to work together even more intensively for the audience across genres and countries in the future. As part of a joint co-production conference in Munich, an inventory of the bilateral and trilateral co-productions that had already been agreed was taken, and numerous other program projects for the coming years are also being examined. The total volume of jointly produced programs and pilots amounts to around 140 million euros annually.

Christine Strobl (ARD Program Director) says:

More cooperation for a strong program in German-speaking countries! I am very pleased with the results of our co-production discussions. We will expand our existing collaborations to include all program genres. In times of increasingly scarce resources and international competition in the digital world, intensifying this partnership in a shared language and cultural area is particularly important.

Nathalie Wappler (SRF Director) says:

We are struggling with similar media and political challenges in all three countries. Public media companies are under pressure. It makes all the more sense to intensify our collaboration, exploit potential and learn from each other. I’m very happy – it’s added value for us and the audience in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Stefanie Groiss-Horowitz (ORF Program Director) says:

Especially in times of global media markets with international players, it is fundamentally important that we public broadcasters work closely together. The co-production discussions are an important step in bundling our forces and strengths and jointly offering original programming on all distribution channels and for all target groups. I am very pleased that we were able to further develop and intensify our cooperation.

 

Source: SRF
Photo credit: Werbewoche.ch