Television

German television began under the shadow of what radio had been used for in the Nazi years, and was deliberately built so that no government could control it again. The result is a system of regional public broadcasters, two national channels, a licence fee and a handful of programmes that most Germans have watched for decades. This chapter explains how that system was designed, how East German television differed, and how the best-loved programmes fit in, from the crime series Tatort to the New Year's Eve sketch from Chapter 1. Dates and facts are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.

Built Against Central Control

After 1945 the occupying powers set up broadcasting in their zones, and the British zone in particular drew on the model of the BBC, with an independent public corporation (check). When West Germany was founded in 1949 its constitution gave the regions, the Länder, responsibility for broadcasting, and the lesson of the Nazi years was that it should not be run by the national government. The system that followed has three main features.

• Regional broadcasters. Public broadcasters were set up for different regions, each with its own board that includes representatives of society and not only of government.
• A joint network. In 1950 the regional broadcasters joined to form ARD, which shares a national first channel while each broadcaster also produces regional programmes.
• A licence fee. Public broadcasting is funded mainly by a household charge and not by taxes, to keep it at arm's length from government.

East German Television

East Germany took a different path. Its television service, the Deutscher Fernsehfunk, was a state broadcaster controlled by the ruling party, with its own news programme, entertainment and children's shows. It also ran programmes designed to answer Western television, one of which, The Black Channel, was a regular commentary attacking Western broadcasts (check). The audience could often watch Western stations too, since signals crossed the border, and in most of the East it was simple to tune in to the West. The exception was a region around Dresden where the signal was weak, sometimes nicknamed the "valley of the clueless" (check).

One programme crossed the border in a different way. The children's bedtime puppet Sandmännchen (the Little Sandman) was shown in both German states from the late 1950s, with different versions (check). It is a surviving example of shared German television culture.

Tatort

The programme most closely tied to German television is the crime series Tatort ("crime scene"). Its first episode was shown in November 1970 (check), and it has run ever since on Sunday evenings, with a new episode most weeks. Its special feature is that it is made by many of the regional broadcasters, so each team of detectives is based in a different city, with its own style: some are serious, some comic. Austria and Switzerland contribute teams too.

• A shared ritual. Many viewers watch it as a habit, and some hold Sunday-evening viewing parties and online discussions.
• A showcase for regions. The settings are real German cities and regions, which gives the series a map-like quality.
• Comedy and drama. The most popular teams include a pair of investigators in Münster whose episodes are comic (check).

Derrick and Other Favourites

The crime series Derrick, which ran on ZDF from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, followed a calm, formal police inspector in Munich and was sold to many countries, becoming especially popular in some of them (check). Other long-running shows include Tagesschau, the evening news programme broadcast since the early 1950s, which gave the national channel a regular fixed point, and Die Sendung mit der Maus, a children's educational programme from 1971.

Dinner for One

The sketch from Chapter 1 needs its explanation. Dinner for One is a short English-language comic sketch about an elderly lady's birthday dinner and her butler, who has to play all the absent guests and gets drunker with each course. It was written in English, performed by the British comedian Freddie Frinton and recorded in Germany in 1963 for a northern German broadcaster (check). Over the following years it became a New Year's Eve tradition, with the line "the same procedure as every year" known to nearly everyone. It is often described as one of the most repeated programmes in the world, though that claim should be treated with care. In Britain it is almost unknown, which makes it an unusual example of a cultural export.

Saturday-Night Shows

For several decades Saturday evening was reserved for large entertainment shows. One of the best known, Wetten, dass..?, ran on ZDF from the early 1980s to the mid-2010s, mixing bets about unusual feats with celebrity guests (check). The Eurovision Song Contest was an important part of the same tradition: the German member of the European Broadcasting Union is ARD, whose regional broadcaster for the north organises Germany's entry (check). See The Eurovision Song Contest 2 for the origins of the network.

Spiel ohne Grenzen

The international game show known in France as Jeux sans frontières and in Britain as It's a Knockout was broadcast in West Germany as Spiel ohne Grenzen, and West Germany is generally reported to have been among the first participating countries (check). It is covered in Jeux Sans Frontières (It's a Knockout): Europe's Game Show 3, and the German angle fits the shared-network picture in this chapter.

Commercial Television

For about thirty years the only channels were public ones. In the mid-1980s the first commercial channels began, helped by cable and satellite, and they brought game shows, soaps and imported series. The result is called the "dual system", in which public and commercial channels exist side by side, with ARD and ZDF still carrying the main news and the major events. After reunification the East German broadcasting was folded into this system.

Exercises

Next chapter: The Epics: Heimat, Das Boot & Berlin Alexanderplatz, which looks at the large works made for television and cinema.