RTL figurehead Günther Jauch.Image: RTL / Stefan Gregorowius
The change in the media market is affecting RTL Deutschland. Now the company is responding with job cuts.
12/02/2025, 11:0812/02/2025, 11:08
RTL Deutschland is cutting around 600 jobs as part of a restructuring. “There are two big challenges that we have to solve in order to be successful in the long term,” said RTL Germany boss Stephan Schmitter to the German Press Agency. One of them is the profound change in the media market, the other is the difficult economic situation. “Wirtschaftswoche” had previously reported on major job cuts at the company, which is part of the Bertelsmann media group.
According to RTL Deutschland, the 600 affected positions include both full-time and part-time employees. The conversion should be implemented in a socially responsible manner. “As socially acceptable, appreciative and transparent as possible in such a difficult situation,” added Schmitter. A special severance pay program has been developed together with the works councils to support affected employees.
“The social plan that we negotiated with the works council is intended to avoid redundancies for operational reasons as much as possible,” said Schmitter. Instead, affected employees should be relieved through partial retirement, severance pay or other support offers.
Economic context and streaming focus
The background to this is, among other things, the ongoing recession and the weak TV advertising markets. According to RTL, linear TV advertising sales in Germany have fallen by more than 20 percent since 2019. At the same time, the group invested heavily in the expansion of the RTL+ streaming service, whose number of subscribers has increased to over 6.6 million. With continued dynamic growth in all key metrics – sales, paying subscribers, service life – RTL+ is on track to become profitable in the 2026 financial year, the company said. “This overall situation makes it imperative that we now reposition ourselves structurally,” said Schmitter.
At the same time, RTL is focusing more on the streaming business. “Through these measures we will save a high, double-digit million amount in personnel costs,” said Schmitter. “But it will be much more important to consistently align the organization with the major changes in the media market and to focus on competition with US streaming services.”
No immediate cuts to the linear program
For viewers, the renovation does not mean any immediate cuts to the linear program. “We continue to broadcast 24 hours a day and want to defend our market-leading positions among 14-49 year olds and 14-59 year olds,” said Schmitter. At the same time, he announced that program budgets will increasingly be shifted from linear TV to high-quality streaming content. “We plan to continue to invest over a billion in our content every year, but to reallocate the budgets in favor of high-quality streaming content.”
It should also be seen whether content teams can be merged in order to produce content for RTL+ more efficiently. «Currently, individual content teams are responsible for the respective content on a TV channel. We will combine these teams so that together they can produce the best content for RTL+ in every genre,” explained Schmitter. “We are dissolving the current channel logic, because with streaming everyone watches where they want, what they want and when they want.”
Exclusive formats initially on RTL+
What this means specifically for individual formats has not yet been completely decided. “We are still in the final vote, but it is entirely possible that “The Traitors” or “The Bachelors” will be shown in full on RTL+ before they are broadcast on linear TV,” said Schmitter.
RTL Deutschland belongs to the international RTL Group, Europe’s largest commercial broadcasting group. In Germany, in addition to RTL, the company operates ntv and Vox as well as the streaming service RTL+.
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