ARD is introducing an advance premiere of Tatort and Police Call in the media library

Next Sunday, the longest “Tatort” summer break of all time comes to an end with the Furtwängler crime thriller “The Yellow King,” and ARD is using the start for a new broadcast strategy. Sunday isn't quite right: from next week onwards, the new episode of "Tatort" and "Polizeiruf" will not only be available for TV broadcast in the ARD media library, but on Friday, the broadcasting association announced. To do this, however, you have to create a media library user account with your name and email address and log in. When you log in to ARD you are also logged in to ZDF. “Crime Scene” and “Police Call,” writes program director Christine Strobl in the statement, would achieve what hardly any other format can achieve: “On Monday, so many people talk about the same case.” The preview from Friday is made “for everyone who can’t wait until Sunday”.

One background to the decision for Friday's premiere may also be: ARD and ZDF rely on personalized, shared recommendation systems for registered users in order to better reach regional or age-specific target groups. It is therefore in your interest that as many viewers as possible get an account, even if the content is fully accessible without registration. The broadcasters emphasize that the recommendation systems differ from those of the tech companies; ZDF, for example, explains its algorithms on its own website. It is optional to specify the date of birth, which means that content that is only released for the age group of 16 and over can be viewed in the media library at any time, instead of only from 10 p.m. Age information is not necessary for the “Tatort” preview in the media library.

On linear TV, the number of viewers for Sunday crime dramas averages just under 8.3 million viewers (2025), with a peak of up to 13 million. In addition to TV use, “Tatort” and “Polizeiruf” would achieve around ten percent additional reach through media library access, reports ARD. The investigative teams for Sunday crime stories are currently undergoing a generational change, for example after the brilliant farewell of Miroslav Nemec and Udo Wachtveitl from the Munich “crime scene” at Easter. In the coming season, a particularly large number of new investigative teams will be starting, for example in Kiel, Munich or Franconia. The MDR, on the other hand, has just announced that it will pause “Tatort” and “Polizeiruf” for three years for cost reasons.

The new advance strategy should help attract more viewers to an account in public media libraries. But one can at least doubt whether it really helps Sunday crime thrillers: In the future, “Tatort” fans who ritually watch their crime thriller on Sunday evenings will have to avoid social media completely from Friday onwards in order not to necessarily find out who the murderer is and how the crime thriller ends. It is risky for the “Tatort” and “Polizeiruf” brands to give up the uniqueness of the collective TV experience on Sundays, which no longer exists on television.