Kirch

Kirch is Germany's only national pay television network. It has been expanding beyond Germany, in response to competition concerns and attempts by groups such as Liberty Media to build rival networks. Kirch has substantial film/video production interests but is probably best known for its involvement with Formula 1 racing. Performance by its new media units has been underwhelming.

Murdoch's News, Axel Springer and the Berlusconi group have small stakes in Kirch. Kirch in turn has small stakes in News and Berlusconi's Mediaset. It holds around 40% of Springer.

     shape

The group began as a German distributor for US feature films (an early highlight was licensing Buster Keaton's personal library), moved into film/video co-production and production, and then into cable television and global rights trading - notably though a US$1.54 billion deal with Formula 1 czar Bernie Eccleston earlier this year.

KirchMedia operates five free-to-air television channels in Germany (SAT.1, ProSieben, Kabel 1, Deutsches SportFernsehen DSF and the news channel N24) and has stakes in Berlusconi-controlled Telecinco (Spain) and Mediaset (Italy).

It has film/video production units in Germany and co-production or co-finance arrangements in other countries, responsible for around 1,000 hours of content each year. Co-financing deals with US studios have generally been reflected in exclusive marketing rights for the German-speaking area. Its feature film, TV film, series, sport and documentary library contains around 63,000 hours of fiction footage.

An indication of Kirch holdings is here. The byzantine structure of the group means that the often selective information on the various Kirch sites should be used with some caution.

     studies

There are no major English-language studies of Kirch. Michael Radtke's Außer Kontrolle - Die Medienmacht des Leo Kirch: Ein Report (Munich: Erpf 94) is a treat for germanists, albeit quite dated.

For a view of moves into the digital television market see the 1998 paper (PDF) from the Institut d'la Audioviseul et des Telecommunications en Europe. The regulatory environment in the preceding decade is analysed in Peter Humphreys' Media and Media Policy in Germany: Press & Broadcasting since 1945 (Oxford: Berg 94) and Pluralism, Politics & the Marketplace: the Regulation of German Broadcasting (London: Routledge 91) by Vincent Porter & Suzanne Hasselbach.

For F1 see Russell Hotten's Formula 1: The Business of Winning (London: Orion Business 98)







     next page  (Kirch holdings)