FIGHT THE POWER: German Woman Jailed For Refusing To Pay Public Broadcast Fee. ” She was marched off to a police station and then to jail in Chemnitz, Saxony – and a notice that she was being let go from her job followed soon after. But the broadcaster fee refusenik, who stopped paying in 2013, believes that her cause is just. She and other opponents of the fees argue that public TV channels ARD and ZDF and radio broadcaster Deutschlandradio are massively overfinanced and have overstepped the bounds of the ‘basic service’ the law calls on them to provide.” They also, of course, engage in politicking on behalf of the political class, which is in fact their entire reason for existing, as with all the other national broadcasting entities.