MiMa Carousel, Act Three: MDR Hands Back the ARD Midday Magazine After Barely Three Years

From BR to RBB to MDR and Now to NDR

This would make NDR the fourth ARD broadcaster to produce the format within roughly ten years. Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) had been responsible for MiMa from 1989 to 2017 before stepping away for cost reasons. RBB took over in 2018, slid into its biggest crisis with the Schlesinger affair, and gave it up in early 2024. MDR, which had initially budgeted around six million euros a year internally, ultimately brought production costs down to about three million. That's remarkable, since RBB had produced only one broadcast hour for roughly the same sum, while MDR fills two. Even so, it's not enough. The broadcaster must cut 160 million euros during the current fee period, with at least another 30 million on top if the KEF's recommended fee increase to 18.64 euros is implemented on January 1, 2027. Should that increase fail to materialize, the shortfall rises to as much as 60 million.

Why NDR? Ties to ARD-aktuell and Lokstedt Structures

That NDR of all broadcasters is now set to take over makes sound business sense. ARD-aktuell is based in Hamburg-Lokstedt, meaning Tagesschau, Tagesthemen, tagesschau.de, and what used to be tagesschau24. It's precisely this specialty channel that will be discontinued on December 31, 2026, with its content flowing from January 2027 into the merged channels phoenix and info. That frees up broadcast capacity and staff in Lokstedt, which can neatly be redirected into a two-hour midday slot. From the perspective of an NDR strategist, it's almost too good to be true: a news department that already broadcasts continuously from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. essentially gets MiMa as an additional programming block, with considerably less extra effort than at any other broadcaster. NDR has already confirmed to DWDL.de that it is currently examining scenarios under which it could assume overall responsibility.

What the End Means for Leipzig, Technically and in Terms of Staff

For our profession, this is far more than a headline in the media column. With MiMa's departure, Leipzig loses a daily live format that ties up studio, ENG, and feed workflows at MDR headquarters for two hours a day. The broadcast lives on immediacy, on live crossovers to the ARD studios in the federal states, on ENG segments from the regional magazines, on stand-ups and studio talks. If the format moves to Hamburg, that geography shifts along with it.

On top of that: just on Wednesday, MDR informed staff that "MDR um Zwei" is also facing the axe, the last remaining live broadcast from an ARD regional station in the early afternoon. The program comes from the state studio in Magdeburg and is generally considered inexpensive, since it partly repurposes content from the regional magazines. If MiMa in Leipzig now disappears as well, the combined effect is a massive rollback of daily live programming across the broadcast region. For freelance camera operators and ENG teams who staff these slots, that's bad news in an already tight job market.

Three Million, Two Hours, No Profit

The cost side deserves a closer look. Three million euros a year for a two-hour daily live broadcast is, by the standards of public broadcasting magazine production, a very solid figure. MDR managed it by having the "Tagesmagazine und Dialog" editorial team draw on synergies with Brisant, the MDR afternoon programming, and MDR aktuell. Segments from the media library and audio library were repurposed and reused, podcast hosts were brought into the studio talk segment, and the day's news, as always, came from ARD studios at home and abroad. That MDR can no longer afford even this leaned-down format says a great deal about the depth of the current austerity pressure. Anyone hoping it will become significantly cheaper in Hamburg is likely to be disappointed. The move primarily serves to consolidate structures, not necessarily to cut costs further.

The East German Twist

One has to grant the affair a certain political irony. MDR had specifically brought MiMa to Leipzig to make the East German broadcasting alliance more visible within Das Erste. There were fierce debates about identity, over how "East German" the presenting team needed to be. Now that production is moving to Hamburg-Lokstedt, the East German visibility that the project set out to achieve in 2024 is, in this form, history. And here's where it gets truly ironic: the missing fee increase that is largely responsible for MDR's budget gap is due chiefly to the blocking stance taken by Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Those are precisely the states where calls for East German perspectives to be given greater weight within Das Erste are loudest. The irony writes itself.

What Remains Unclear

A whole range of questions remains unanswered. Exactly when in the first half of 2027 will the production move take place? What happens to the staff of MDR's "Tagesmagazine und Dialog" editorial team, who lose a cornerstone with MiMa's departure? How many positions will actually be freed up in Hamburg as a result of tagesschau24's discontinuation, and can they be transferred to the MiMa team without creating new duplicate structures at the other end? And not least: will Leipzig receive any compensation as a location, or is this simply another step in the rollback of East German media production?

We'll keep following this story.