TV in Munich

OK, this is probably the simplest of the topics that have been burning a hole in my brain, and I thought it might be interesting for other folks.
I don't think I need to explain to anyone how TV works in the U.S., but just for kicks, let's establish a few ideas:

• Today, TV generally costs money. You pay X dollars for basic cable, with X being a function of local monopoly and economy (i.e. in NYC you get raped by Time Warner, in other areas you have multiple choices of providers for a reasonable amount of money). You can also pay extra for premium channels like HBO, Showtime, every NFL game played that season, whatever. Typically these come in bundles.
• Theoretically there are still TV broadcasts coming over the air (OTA). There are a few networks (USA, Comedy Central, CW, Food Network, Lifetime, etc) that have original programming but are not available over the air, but generally the big boys are available, at least in parts of the country, over the standard antenna. However, NOBODY uses this except for the folks on the two ends of the spectrum; folks who are absolutely too poor to have paid cable (and from a lot of books and newspapers I've read, cable / satellite is one of the things that even people in relative poverty find a way to pay for), and the techno-geeks who know that the OTA HD quality is still superior to anything delivered over a wire. OTA is free to the consumer, and is supported by advertising revenue.
• There are quite a few players in the making and broadcasting of a TV show. There are, of course, the producers - the folks actually making the shows. They're responsible for the writing, casting, shooting, editing, etc etc. The producers' final product is a tape of an episode of the show, which then goes to the distributor. To give an example, the show "Smallville" is produced by Warner Brothers, and distributed by the CW (generally, when a company owns both a production and distribution company - i.e. NBC/Universal or Fox/20th C - , the two go hand in hand, but that's not the way it always works). The distributor's job is, as the name implies, to get the content into the eyes and ears of the people.
• As you can guess, the money for all of this comes from advertisers. The business of securing and delivering advertising for a distribution network is very complex, but effectively it boils down to paying for popularity. If everyone does their job right, the show is properly marketed (which, incidentally, is generally the responsibility of the distributor), it gets a high viewership, the advertisers are happy, the distribution network is able to charge more money for ads the next time around, and the producer is able to sell the next set of episodes to the distributor for a higher amount. Incidentally, note that almost ALL the money comes from the advertisers. There are other revenue channels such as online distribution, iTunes, DVDs and other merchandise, but the vast majority of the revenue comes from the on-air advertising.
• The folks responsible for the actual delivery (DirectTV, cable company, or broadcast station) also play a part. Generally, their relationship is a symbiotic one for distributors; more delivery channels means more viewers, and when a popular distribution channel is available on the delivery mechanism (for example, when TNT is available on DirectTV or Time Warner cable), it makes the product more attractive to consumers who are willing to pay to have that TV station delivered to them.
  

Even with this being a lengthy description, it's still only a big generalization, with a lot of detail left out.
In Germany, the model is very similar, with a couple of big differences; first off, the list of TV stations that are available "for free" is much larger, due to a ubiquitous cable infrastructure. I have NO idea how this came to pass, but for some reason every apartment building has a cable box that's rigged to a central receiver; if you have a TV, you just plug it into the existing cable jack and away you go, with about 30 channels available through the standard receiver. The actual cable infrastructure is maintained by the building, and a small part of your common charges go into that. I'm not sure how it works for houses, because we didn't consider a house when looking to move.
Anyway, this is what Germans refer to as "free" TV. It's all paid for the same way as OTA broadcasts in America, although just for fun, there are also a few public stations similar to the BBC, that are supported by a TV tax. Merely owning a television in Germany makes you subject to the TV tax, which is somewhere around 10 Euros per month. Similarly, merely owning a car radio also makes you subject to a car radio tax (something like 1-2 Euros a month). If, like me, your TV is directly connected to your computer, or your radio is directly connected to your iPod, that doesn't matter - you still have to pay the tax.
The TV tax pays for the government-owned stations, and the rest of the stations are supported by ad revenue. The system still works the same way - producers pitch / auction shows to distributors, and the distributors sell ad time on their stations.
There are also a lot of "pay TV" stations - some of these are HBO-style, but most are stations that cater to a specific crowd, such as sports fans or fans of a particular genre.

Here's where things get strange; I work for a major media company that, as described above, is also merged with a production company. In America, this company is one of the big networks. In Germany, it's a collection of Pay TV stations. Even stranger, the big shows that come out of the production company are shown by the most popular Free TV networks, and the stations from my company primarily syndicate older, genre-specific programs. Since our networks are all Pay TV, the viewership is relatively limited, and we can't make much money from advertisers - the majority of our revenue comes from subscription fees. To make things even weirder, there's one person working here for the production side of the house, and he's effectively in his own little world, because his responsibility is to sell the shows, and our little networks can't even come close to matching the offers of the Free TV stations.

This, to me, seems totally bizarre. Effectively, we're just a small collection of Pay TV stations, and we make enough money to stay afloat but not do anything really ground-breaking. Up until very recently, we also owned a single Free TV network, but we just spun it off. For some reason, management has decided that the best course of action is to focus on our Pay TV properties, but I have no idea why we're doing that. I'd like to stick my nose into this, but right now I'm a little busy with my current project for the U.S./India.

Anyway, I just thought that was interesting. Next time I'll tackle the really big topic of TV distribution and independent production, which is something that's been even more on my mind than the operations of our little station collective in Munich.