Florian Kumb to head ZDF's Audience Directorate from January

How the ZDF press release Dr Florian Kumb will take over the management of the new Audience Directorate at ZDF on 1 January 2025. As channel manager, Milena Seyberth will be responsible for ZDFneo and ZDFmediathek, among other things, and will represent him.

Florian Kumb has been head of ZDF's main programme planning department since 2020. In this role, he has been instrumental in preparing the establishment of the new directorate over the past year. Milena Seyberth, on the other hand, is to strengthen the focus on younger target groups: She is responsible for the planning, distribution and communication of all fictional and entertainment programmes as well as young target groups. Thanks to her many years of editorial experience, Seyberth is very familiar with the development of fictional material and target group-orientated content. The development of a content strategy for younger target groups was the focus of her work as Head of Content for the young programme "funk". Most recently, as Head of Service in the Directorate General, she was involved in the implementation of the "One ZDF for All" strategy process, among other things.

Portfolio management, planning and distribution from a single source

In future, all programme planning, distribution and communication processes will be bundled and managed across all channels in the Audience Directorate. The areas previously responsible for this, such as the ZDF main programme, the digital channels, 3sat, the ZDFmediathek and social media, will be merged organisationally into a new directorate.The areas of programme finance and production controlling, digital platform development with "Streaming OS" and media research will also be added.

The organisational change announced in September 2024 is ZDF's response to the changes in usage habits in the digital broadcasting and platform world: The new Audience Directorate will bring together the previous ZDF main departments of Programme Planning and Digital Media, the coordination of ZDFneo and 3sat, programme-related communication and the planning units of ZDFinfo and ZDFtivi/KiKA.