Film investors around the world are hoping to be given the same kind of opportunity as is being dangled in front of TV groups.

The KirchMedia group, which is currently in insolvency administration, this week said that it would consider selling off the ProsiebenSAT1 group separately from its other media assets.

This is a reversal of the earlier policy, which had seen Kirch insist on selling all its activities to a single buyer or single consortium. And now investors are asking whether the film library, which contains some world or partial rights to some 10,000 titles, will also be broken out.

KirchMedia currently owns 52.5% of ProsiebenSAT1, German's two most successful commercial TV channels. The remaining shares are publicly traded on the stockmarket, and indicate that the broadcast operations are worth Euros1.5bn.

The stockmarket quote for ProsiebenSAT1, however, may make it easier to separate off the broadcast unit, rather than the film library. And even then there are complications. Under one option that Kirch and the insolvency administrator are said to be examining an investor would buy KirchMedia's ProsiebenSAT1 stake and then use it to buy up the film library.

"We have a fundamental interest in the library," a ProSiebenSat.1 spokeswoman said. The broadcaster bought about 40% of its programmes from KirchMedia last year.

The talk of separating out different assets may be a sign that the sale of KirchMedia to one of the three consortia known to have made preliminary bids is not going well, now that they are examining the books in close detail. The highest bid is said to value KirchMedia at Euros2.6bn.