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Management Control in German Television: Delivering Numbers for Management Decision

This article explores an important trend in German TV stations: the introduction and steady advancement of management control (MC) systems. Most publications aim at transferring MC theory to TV without explicit definition of the TV production function, thus this article describes the TV core processes (production, programming, sale, and promotion) to which MC is applied. The results from a full census among controllers of German TV stations about participation, instruments, and problems of MC in their companies are presented and interpreted. The results suggest that the level of MC is high only among top-rated commercial stations. Controllers in German TV stations mainly manage the planning and budgeting systems, but also act increasingly as internal consultants for program management. The dominant problems appear to be the establishment and acceptance of MC as well as methodical difficulties of TV accounting. The MC systems of public and commercial stations reflect the different business missions and systems.