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Germany to Launch TV Channel Exclusively for Funerals

A German businessman plans to launch the country's first television channel dedicated to funerals and mourning, complete with death announcements and documentaries about cemeteries.

A German businessman plans to launch the country's first television channel dedicated to funerals and mourning, complete with death announcements and documentaries about cemeteries.

The channel, which will be called Etos TV, is meant to inform people about funeral practices and act as a counter to a growing trend in Germany to be buried anonymously, said Kerstin Gernig from the German undertakers' association.

"Every person has left his mark, raised children, paid taxes, done something. We would like them to be shown respect. This channel will inform people in a discreet, serious way how to bury their loved ones.

"We hope that this will become the 'Arte' of the funeral culture," she added, referring to the Franco-German arts and culture channel.

The channel is the brainchild of entrepreneur Wolf Tilmann Schneider who said he would like it to be on air by Christmas but still needs to secure more funding.

It will offer a death announcement service where for about 2,000 euros (2,890 euros), a photograph of the deceased will be shown, accompanied either by background music or the reading of a message in his memory.

For a higher fee, it will screen a short film about the departed friend of family member, Schneider said.

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Cultural commentator Peter Wippermann said the channel could help to break latter day taboos surrounding death.

"In the past, the family would accompany a dying person to the end. But in our society death is no longer something we like to talk about.

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"So I think that though this is obviously a commercial venture, it could also satisfy a social need."

Source-AFP
SRM


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