N24 (Germany)

History

In the late 1990s, in the heat of the dot-com bubble ProSieben Media Group, then consisting of two TV channels (ProSieben and Kabel 1) whose programming largely consisted of US movies, sitcoms and series, tried to take over German television news channel n-tv, then owned by Handelsblatt and CNN. After the attempt failed, ProSieben Media purchased German newswire ddp (now dapd) and announced the launch of its own news channel soon afterwards, by consolidating ProSieben's news department. The channel was launched on January 24, 2000 at noon, from ProSieben Media's headquarters in Unterföhring near Munich. In collaboration with Bloomberg Television, N24 provided live coverage of financial markets around the world. Apart from running its own network, N24 also provided ProSieben and Kabel 1 with newscasts.

In the same year, ProSieben Media AG purchased rival channel Sat.1, located in Berlin, which had a news department of its own and ran a number of factual programmes. ProSieben Media AG renamed itself ProSiebenSat1 Media AG afterwards. After the merger, N24 moved from Unterföhring to Sat1's headquarters in Berlin in July 2001, and the news departments of Sat1 and N24 were combined.

In 2002, ProSiebenSat1's majority owner, KirchMedia, filed for bankruptcy. While ProSiebenSat1 itself was not broke, an extended search for a buyer, during which ProSiebenSat1 was effectively owned by KirchMedia's banks, created uncertainty at the company. This combined with the market crisis after the end of the dotcom bubble and 9/11, caused ProSiebenSat1 to cut costs. It replaced a number of newscasts on N24, especially in the afternoons, the evenings and on the weekends, with cheaper documentaries. Business and stock market coverage was also cut dramatically, and remaining business reports were bought from CNBC Europe instead of producing them in-house. The reports featured CNBC’s proprietary graphics. In 2007, N24 strengthened its business coverage, introducing daily programmes such as Börse am Mittag ["Stock Market Afternoon"] and Börse am Abend ["Stock Market Evening"]. The channel moved its headquarters in October 2008.

In 2008, ProSiebenSat1 sold its property in Berlin and announced that Sat1 would move to Unterföhring, where ProSieben and Kabel 1 were already based. N24 would relocate within Berlin. In 2010, ProSiebenSat1 sold N24 to a group of private investors, led by former Der Spiegel editor Stefan Aust. N24 was contracted by ProSiebenSat1 to continue providing Sat1, ProSieben and Kabel 1 with newscasts at least until 2016. In 2013, N24 was acquired by Axel Springer SE and combined with Die Welt to form Welt N24.

On 17 September 2016, a sister channel called N24 Doku launched free to air, which is a one-hour delayed timeshift channel of N24 in the afternoon and replaces some news broadcasts by documentaries in the morning.

Programming

N24 previously broadcast a variety of programming, with more than seven hours of live programming per business day. CNBC correspondents Silvia Wadhwa, Patricia Szarvas, Roland Klaus, Michael Mross and Bruni Schubert report live from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the LSE and the NYSE throughout the day. Since August 2010, news programming has been cut back, with no program lasting more than 15 minutes.

Previous N24 newscasts:

Currently, N24 runs news on the hour, every hour.