On 1 January 2013, Germany and Finland made the switch from the traditional broadcasting licence fee tied to television-set ownership to a compulsory excise duty collected from all citizens, households and places of business. This article compares the changes in these countries’ public service media funding arrangements on the basis of John Kingdon’s ‘multiple streams’ framework of public policy-making which, to date, has been rather neglected in studies of media policy-making processes. Drawing on the analysis of policy documents and interviews with policymakers and other stakeholders involved in the respective processes, we investigate how the actual reforms materialized, which other possibilities were neglected and why this has been the case.