They will play in the box

The first TV channel about funerals and death will appear in Germany

In the competition for the attention of viewers in the widest range of existing private cable and satellite television channels, specialization begins to take on extremely specific forms. Music and film channels have long ago divided themselves into genres and styles for fans of “hot” and “calmer”: a separate button for comedy fans, a separate one for retro fans, another for fans of Indian cinema, another for fans TV series There are TV channels about animals and nature, about history and science, there are national and international ones, there are morning and night ones, there are for those under ten, and for those over 18. There are religious ones, which themselves are already divided by religions and religious movements. , there are political, news and analytical. It seems that nothing can surprise anyone in this area anymore. But the new TV channel, the creation of which was announced yesterday by the German Deutsche Welle, seems to have succeeded. According to this publication, the German Funeral Directors' Association (BDB) will launch a satellite TV channel for older Germans in the coming months, entirely dedicated to the topic of death and funerals.

As its creators promise, via the Internet and satellite this channel will show programs about various funeral rituals, reports from cemeteries and funeral homes, documentaries about the most picturesque necropolises in Germany, as well as television obituaries ordered by relatives (it is assumed that the funds received for these services will go to finance the channel). The television, the name of which is still being proposed, will begin broadcasting before the end of 2007.

In addition to paid television obituaries, another source of funding, according to the organizers, will be advertising of goods and services related to aging: chair lifts for the elderly, life insurance, nursing homes. Accordingly, the channel’s organizers see the channel’s target audience as elderly people for whom departure to another world has moved from a philosophical problem to a topical one. The idea that illuminated the organizers of the channel and which was then transformed into the concept of a new broadcast is this: to remove the taboo from the topic of death, which, according to the founders of the channel, is widespread in German society. In their opinion, for this reason, older people and their loved ones often find themselves unprepared for death and the moral and organizational problems associated with it.

However, as the creators of the new television emphasize, their goal is not to make commercial profit, but only intend to provide moral support to the elderly population, whose share in Germany is growing year by year. To ensure that correspondents and editors do not stray from the right tone in conversations and reports on this sensitive topic, the activities of the TV channel will be monitored by an ethical council, which will make recommendations on the proposed topics and the nature of their coverage. After all, it has not yet been proven that listening to funeral music in the company of others like you in a nursing home while watching advertisements for wheelchairs together is exactly what an elderly person needs to achieve peace of mind.

However, Germany is not the first country where high technology has come to the aid of the ritual. Several years ago in Israel, an elite private cemetery near Netanya was equipped with the most modern communications, including the Internet, so that relatives and friends of the deceased could watch the funeral ceremony through the cemetery website, as well as light a virtual candle over the grave on the memorial day.

For Russia, with a state monopoly on the funeral business, neither private cemeteries nor funeral TV channels are yet relevant. In rethinking the attitude towards the death of potential clients in a positive direction, the entrepreneur German Sterligov tried to make the first breakthrough. An advertisement for a wholesale supply of coffins remained in people's memory for a long time. Then the entrepreneur admitted in an interview that this business “makes you look at your existence more deeply.” It seems that the views of the creators of the new German television coincide with the conclusions of Mr. Sterligov: “When you see coffins, coffins, coffins in front of you all the time, you begin to live differently.”

Irina BELASHEVA