I am not talking about sensational or misleading like in FoxNews or CNN :-) I am talking about boring as in....very serious persons, on a serious background, reading very serious the Reuters or Ap news of the day. As the service was paid and it has to provided ;-) A better model would be instead having to provide good analysis or quality content otherwise your audience will go somewhere. As in for example, the FT or the Economist.

Actually thinking about it, the issue is wider than just the news and I think the financing mode of the mandatory tax is a big part of it. What is really a shame, as Germany has a rich culture of hundreds of years so great content in all forms should not be a problem.

"Why is TV in Germany so bad?" https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/3d4vxz/why_is_tv_i...

"Why is German TV so crap?" https://www.exberliner.com/blogs/the-berlinale-blog/berlinal...

You might comment the BBC financing model is similar and I would agree. I think the difference is that the BBC also embraced a highly commercial model of selling content like Top Gear and other stuff worldwide. In this case the English language content with its planetary audience, pushed for a more competitive/commercial model and the German TV stayed too insular in my view.

Audience engagement chases entertainment (and thus reproduces CNN/MSNBC/Fox etc). You won't get what you want by tweaking that metric alone.