It was All Saints Day and families across the Catholic world threaded their way through cemeteries to place candles at the graves of the dead.

For the German media entrepreneur Wolf-Tilmann Schneider, though, it was a normal working day – and the perfect moment to set out his plans for Death television. The Grim Reaper, it seems, will soon be exposed to the full glare of the studio lights.

Etos-TV will be Europe’s first channel devoted to death: documentaries on beautiful cemeteries, round-table discussions about the appropriate means of burial and on-screen obituaries that can be distributed later to friends and family on the internet.

“We’re planning to broadcast from early next year,” Mr Schneider said yesterday, adding that a few final negotiations with “strategic partners” remained after the licence was approved in September.

The Good Mourning channel, as it has been mockingly dubbed by some, acknowledges that the population of Germany is ageing rapidly, that older people are often well-off and that the old taboos about discussing death are beginning to melt away.

“Some 830,000 people die a year,” said Mr Schneider, “and there are two million elderly in care.”

As a result there was a big demand for information about death, inheritance law and insurance policies. The satellite channel is being backed by an undertakers’ association representing 3,000 funeral parlours across Germany. Its programmes will be sponsored by residential homes and stair-lift companies.

“This is not primarily an advertising channel,” Kerstin Gernig, for the undertakers, said. “It is about passing on information. Every person has left his mark, raised children, paid taxes, done something. We would like them to be shown respect.” On offer, too, will be an obituary service. For about €2,000 (£1,400), a photograph of a dead friend or relative will be shown on the screen, along with a spoken tribute. The 90-second obituary will be repeated ten times and then be available for distribution on the internet. For a higher fee, a short film can be made recording highlights from the life of the deceased.

“Every citizen should have the choice of having an obituary broadcast on television,” said Mr Schneider, who previously worked for the private television channels, RTL and Sat.1. “Why should only prominent personalities be honoured after their death?”

Until recently Germans have taken a very traditional stand on death and burial. It was rarely discussed in public and was regarded as a matter to be discussed only with the local priest.

Mr Schneider insisted that the project would not be morbid. Squeezed between MTV and 24-hour news channels, the programming will have to be attractive. “There will be amusing stories too,” he said. “After all this is a channel for living people.”

Initially there will be six hours of programming a day but this could well expand. One thing is for sure though: there will be no live broadcasts.

Broadcast views

— The world’s first internet television channel dedicated to single malt Scotch whisky was started this year. Singlemalt.tv already has more than 750,000 viewers a month in more than 100 countries

— GOD TV, founded in London in 1995, is now beamed 24 hours a day from Jerusalem, on 15 satellites, reaching 125 million homes in more than 200 nations

— Of the 416 television channels aimed at Britain, 47 are shopping channels, 32 are for music and 29 are adult channels

— Launched in 2005 Taiwan Indigenous TV is devoted to reversing the marginalisation of aboriginal culture in Taiwan. Its programmes includes aboriginal language lessons, aboriginal music and cooking shows, aboriginal dating programmes and the first aboriginal situation comedy

Sources: god.tv; screendigest.com; singlemalt.tv; Times archive

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