German private broadcaster RTL is to become a shareholder in regional public fund Filmstiftung NRW on July 1, contributing some $2.9m to the overall $28.5m annual budget.

On the eve of this year's Medienforum NRW, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia's prime-minister Wolfgang Clement, RTL's managing director Gerhard Zeiler and Filmstiftung NRW CEO Michael Schmid-Ospach signed an agreement which will see RTL's divisional head for fiction Peter Weckert join Filmstiftung's funding committee and the broadcaster's head of business affairs for programming Matthias Settele appointed as a member of the fund's supervisory board.

RTL's contribution allows the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and public broadcaster WDR to each reduce their stakes in the fund from 45% to 40%, while ZDF and RTL will both hold 10% shares.