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...”
This is not primarily an advertising channel,” Kerstin Gernig, for the undertakers, said....
“On offer...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... “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.
Some 830,000 people die a year,” said Mr Schneider, “and there are two million elderly in care.”
press release | Times Online
Posted by Stubbornson at November 3, 2007 02:12 PM