[Satellite News 06-01-10] On April 30, 2012, German broadcast government agencies ARD and ZDF will begin working with commercial broadcast giants RTL-Group and Pro7-Group to broadcast their satellite programming in digital format to comply with Germany’s analog-to-digital satellite switchover.
    For the next two years, the urgent task of initiators, like Pro-7’s Eva Rössler, is to prepare German audiences for the switch while selling the benefits of digital reception. A similar procedure was used in Germany’s transition to digital terrestrial reception (DVB-T) in 2009.
    Rössler said the information campaign of the German state media authority already seems to be paying off. “The leading satellite operators like SES are right to predict a digital success story in Germany. In 2009 already, the German market for digital hardware registered a sales record with a total of 2.6 million digital satellite receivers and 22 million HD ready TV sets sold. Therefore initiators are convinced, that the industry in Germany will benefit after the shutdown.”
    The digital switchover also comes with enhanced satellite HD offerings. More than 20 HD channels will be received in Germany via Astra by the end of 2010 — up from four it offered at the start of 2009. Since January, nearly all of Germany’s major broadcasters (RTL, Sat.1, Pro7, Kabel Eins and Vox) additionally offer their programming as encrypted HD+ version.
   Klaus Hoffman, who serves with both KlarDigital and the Association of State Media Authorities (ALM), which monitors the media landscape in Germany, told Satellite News that German audiences are showing clear signs of approval over the country’s digital satellite TV future. “With a market share of 14 percent that topped ratings in February, the ARD was pleased with the recent trial balloon of a full satellite HD digital broadcast of the Olympic Winter Games,” Hoffman said.
   SES Astra, which covers 58 percent of digital TV households in Germany, represents a large part of the transmission capacity for HD channels. The operator’s cooperation with News Corp.’s Sky Deutschland (formerly Premiere AG) paved the way for three new transponders, which will be put into business between the mid-2011 and early 2012.
   According to Rössler, German satellite executives have forwarded development of the digital transition since 1997 with benefits from free digital programming such as Einsplus, Einsfestival and EinsExtra. “The Pro7-Group followed in 2006 with our first attempts like Sat.1 Comedy and Kabel Eins Classics. These platforms were well-received and extended by content from Sixx and Pro7’s content for female audiences.”
   Those who fail to buy a digital external set-top box in Germany will be left out of the new offering in a similar fashion to what was predicted, and mostly avoided, during analog-to-digital switchovers in the United States and the United Kingdom. 
    Hoffman is confident that Germany’s satellite digital transition is going well, with 60 percent of satellite households in the country already digitized. “This leaves only 6.8 million citizens being effected by the abolition of the analog system.”
Germany’s 18.6 million cable households, which represent about a 50 percent market share, are moving much slower to digital than satellite households. According to a survey by German market researcher TNS, only 34 percent of cable households are digitized. The hold-up has also been affecting Germany’s transition to all-digital broadband services as the country attempts to completely remove analog components by 2012.