arte

The European culture channel
4, quai du Chanoine Winterer
F-67020 Strasbourg Cédex
Tel.: +33 (0)3.88.14.22.22
Fax: +33 (0)3.88.14.22.00
Internet: www.arte.tv

The European Culture Channel ARTE

ARTE is a public broadcasting company whose programme is focused on the diversity of European creativity. It is tasked with “conceiving, designing and broadcasting television programmes that are of a cultural and international character in a comprehensive sense and suitable for promoting the understanding and approximation of the peoples in Europe” (art. 2 of the founding contract).

From documentaries via big screen and television movies, music, theatre and dance through to magazine and news shows, all TV genres have their place at ARTE. ARTE reaches an audience of several million in Germany, France, the Franco-German language region and the whole of Europe with its programmes every day. The channel comprises three business units: a head office in Strasbourg and the two members delivering the programmes, ARTE Deutschland TV GmbH in Baden-Baden and ARTE France in Paris. It is the fruit of Franco-German cooperation and financed from the licence fees collected in both countries.

A particular challenge for ARTE resides in addressing people from two cultures with different previous national knowledge, different viewing habits and an individual, historically grown understanding of their own. Journalists, editors and all those involved in the programmes not only need to come equipped with a comprehensive understanding of these differences. The audience also expects them to present the stories and underlying information in an equally interesting and exciting manner for German, French and other European citizens. Every year, young journalists are awarded the Franco-German Journalism

Prize for outstanding works that enrich our knowledge of the respectively other country from an individual perspective and by a special depth. ARTE is a partner because the Franco-German Journalism Prize serves to honour contributions that promote the understanding and approximation of the peoples in Europe. ARTE can only redeem this claim with creative journalists, directors, producers and artists who – as the channel itself – share a firm belief in the need to get to know and understand one another.

Especially in the age of globalization, solidarity and a lively intellectual climate are of the utmost importance in Europe. Open-mindedness, creativity, the advancement of new talents and cooperation across borders are our shared future task.

The Franco-German Journalism Prize emboldens talented journalists to tackle this difficult and simultaneously forward-looking challenge. In the future, journalists will be increasingly called upon to not only illuminate their own country, but also the perspectives of our neighbours and standpoints of other countries and cultures. Over and beyond its original mission, the Franco-German Journalism Prize is insofar also a pacemaker for journalistic work: it links Franco-German tradition with the future of our two counties in a globalized world.