As I recall from living there 20 years ago, the tax amount varied by how many tv’s and radios one had. Even the radio in your vehicle was taxed.
There was a large green truck with antennae that would go up every street looking for folks who hadn’t paid the tax.
The Germans had to ‘dump’ the old method of numbers mattering. You had too many radios and TVs showing up and people refusing to be cooperative about the quantity. Adding onto it...young people were starting to use smart-phones, laptops and computers. So between 10 and 20 years ago, they went to the media-tax instead. This tax basically says that quantity doesn’t matter.
To be in my German home and look at the quantity of ‘receivers’...there’s probably a dozen radios, and maybe six items that receive TV of some type.
The growing problem is that German youth (age 30 and below) have given up on a lot of public TV offerings. The committee over public TV ordered them to create a youth-theme network a decade ago. That network was a total failure. So three years ago, they ordered the public TV controller (ARD) to create a new network for young people, which they did....but you can only get it via streaming TV. Their idea is that Amazon and Netflex works this way, and their offering will go the same way.
German ‘kids’ say they don’t care about cop-murder dramas, gameshows, or National Geographic type shows. They want science fiction and action themes. Neither have been accomplished well by German public TV over the past forty years.
The fear going on...enough of the anti-public TV people are accumulating, and it’s only a matter of ten years before enough voters will exist, and force this to be a national agenda item....either dumping half the public TV offerings, or curtail them entirely. The ‘board of governors’ overseeing public TV has continually warned ARD of the approaching crisis.