Overview
- Thirteen of sixteen state parliaments have approved the Reformstaatsvertrag, with Brandenburg, North Rhine–Westphalia and Lower Saxony still to vote before a planned 1 December 2025 start.
- The agreement would shift KiKA from a linear TV channel to an online-only offering across Mediatheken, streaming platforms and apps as part of a wider public broadcasting overhaul.
- An early technical step has been announced with the end of SD satellite distribution on 18 November 2025, while a complete shutdown of the linear service is not slated to occur immediately.
- ARD and ZDF argue for a gradual transition tied to actual audience behavior, resisting a fixed switch-off date for the linear channel.
- Critics warn of losing a long-standing media-education service and of excluding households not fully online, while one report describes a possible cutoff for linear youth channels by 1 January 2029.