The Kirch group has dropped KirchPayTV boss Markus Tellenbach. The operation will be taken over from January by Manfred Puffer, who is currently Kirch Holding finance director.

KirchPayTV was supposed to float on the German stock market by the end of next year. But growth in subscriber numbers is understood to be significantly behind scheduled growth and may have caused Tellenbach's departure. It currently has 1.7 million subscribers, compared with a 2.9 million targeted for the end of this year.