Sonja von Struve will succeed Lutz Semmelrogge, who has held the position of Programme Director since 1 November 2011 and is retiring at the end of the year. Von Struve has been Head of Digital Evolution at SR since April 2022 and has implemented the digital strategy launched by SR Director General Martin Grasmück.
"With her experience as a journalist, programme maker and change manager, Sonja von Struve will continue to drive forward our successful linear formats and our digital strategy in a targeted and sustainable manner as Programme Director from the beginning of the new year," said SR Director General Martin Grasmück.
Dr Thomas Jakobs, Chairman of the SR Broadcasting Council, added: "Sonja von Struve is a real stroke of luck for Saarländischer Rundfunk. In this long-term phase of digital upheaval, she is the ideal new appointment for the programme directorate. We are convinced that she will lead the SR programme safely into the future and were therefore very happy to follow the Director-General's suggestion."
"I would like to thank the Broadcasting Council for the trust they have placed in me and I am very much looking forward to my new role," said the prospective programme director.
Sonja von Struve was born in 1988, is married and has one child. After studying Sinology and Linguistics in Freiburg, she completed a German-Chinese double master's degree in Intercultural German Studies in Göttingen and Nanjing.
This was followed by a journalistic traineeship at the Goethe-Institut's head office in Munich. Immediately afterwards, Sonja von Struve was taken on there as a consultant for digital publishing. Among other things, she was responsible for the Goethe-Institut's overall social media strategy and for assessing global digital projects.
In 2015, von Struve moved to ZDF in Mainz, where she set up a new, cross-divisional social media team under her leadership. She was editorially responsible for ZDF's umbrella channels and social media crisis communication, community management and ZDF's central editing and packaging app.
She also supported other transformation projects at the broadcaster. From 2021, she was head of ZDF's final editorial department, which included the press desk, crisis communication and the programme data final editorial department. She also supported the new format development and distribution process set up at ZDF at the time.
In 2022, she moved to Saarländischer Rundfunk in Saarbrücken as Head of Digital Evolution to drive digital change at the broadcaster.
