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At their annual general meeting in September 2007, the directors and chairmen of the internal bodies of the broadcasters that make up the ARD agreed to apply for the first time the so-called three-stage approval procedure for new services offered by public broadcasters. This procedure was introduced as part of the agreement reached between the European Commission and Germany, under which the preliminary examination of the compatibility of the remit and funding of public service broadcasting with state aid regulations was provisionally discontinued in April 2007 (see IRIS 2007-6: 3 and IRIS 2007-2:...

In its second report on the implementation of the provisions of the Staatsvertrag über den Schutz der Menschenwürde und den Jugendschutz in Rundfunk und Telemedien (Inter-State Agreement on the protection of human dignity and youth in broadcasting and telemedia - JMStV), the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz der Landesmedienanstalten (Youth Protection Commission of the regional media authorities - KJM) stressed that the protection of young people in the media must be given greater prominence (for the KJM's first report see IRIS 2005-6: 12). It concluded that the ever-increasing quantity of problematic...

The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Agency - BKartellA) has given the green light to the creation of a joint venture between the three mobile network operators T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2 for the construction and operation of a platform for mobile television broadcasting based on the DVB-H standard. It does not believe that the companies involved are likely to create or strengthen a dominant position in the markets concerned. The company was founded in connection with the call for tenders for DVB-H frequencies and for the use of these frequencies, issued by the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Networks...

In the dispute over the television film commissioned by Westdeutsche Rundfunk (WDR) about the Contergan scandal of the 1950s, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court - BVerfG) decided, on 5 September 2007, as the final instance court in the urgent procedure, that the film could be broadcast on television in the autumn. In July 2006, the former manufacturer of Contergan, Grünenthal GmbH, and a lawyer who had represented the interests of victims of the drug Contergan since 1961, had obtained temporary injunctions from the Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg District Court - LG) preventing...

In a ruling of 11 September 2007, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court - BVerfG) decided that the fixing of broadcasting licence fees by the legislative bodies of the German Bundesländer had infringed the broadcasting freedom of the public service broadcasters under Art. 5.1.2 of the Grundgesetz (Basic Law - GG), and was therefore unconstitutional. In their appeals to the Constitutional Court, the regional broadcasting authorities that make up the ARD, along with ZDF and Deutschlandradio , had argued that the fixing of the licence fees for the period from 2005 to 2008 breached...