Television in Germany
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As the world's fourth largest economy and with the largest population in the European Union, Germany today offers a vast diversity of television stations.
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[edit] History
The first regular electronic television service began in Berlin on March 22, 1935, broadcasting 90 minutes three times a week. In 1948 the British occupation forces allowed NWDR to broadcast television programs for the British zone. Other regional networks also started to launch television in their own areas. Meanwhile, the GDR was launching its own television service, based on the Soviet model.
In 1954 a regular schedule began through the cooperation of all ARD members. During this time the basic television genres in the central areas of entertainment, information and enlightenment were established, and television plays developed as the mediums own specific art form. Improvements in technology and programming, as well as reduced prices, led to a steady increase in license holders, and the number of licenses passed the 1-million mark in October of 1957.
On April 1, 1963, the long-promised second TV network, the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (Second German Television) started. Unlike ARD, which was regionalized and had its roots in radio, ZDF was a centrally organized channel devoted solely to television. On August 25, 1967, at 9:30 a.m. on both ARD and ZDF, vice chancellor Willy Brandt started the era of color TV in West Germany by pressing a symbolic launch button at the International Radio and Tv Fair in West Berlin.
In 1969 East Germany started DFF2, and introduced color programming on both channels. In 1972, the DFF was renamed, dropping the pretense of being an all-German service and becoming Fernsehen der DDR (GDR Television) or DDR-FS. Its two channels became known as DDR1 and DDR2.
In 1984 the first two privately financed TV networks, RTL plus (short for Radio Television Luxemburg) and SAT 1, started their programming in Western Germany.
After reunification, the TV stations of the German Democratic Republic were dissolved and the remnants were used to found new regional networks, e.g. the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (Central German Broadcasting), as part of the ARD. In addition, more private TV stations opened, becoming available through cable, satellite, and in some cases, over the airwaves.
[edit] Terrestrial
Terrestrial reception had lost most of its users by the 1990s[citation needed] due to extensive cable and satellite coverage. In a two step process in 2003 analogue terrestrial TV broadcasting in the states of Berlin and Brandenburg was switched off and replaced by DVB-T, until 2005 about two-third of Germany's states at least started to replace analogue transmission, too. By 2006, all metropolitan and most of the rural areas have moved to digital transmission. DVB-T coverage is planned to be around 90% of Germany by end of 2007, analogue television broadcasting is to be completely terminated by 2010.
While the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF transmit throughout Germany, commercial stations are only available within metropolitan areas, so the number of available channels varies between about 10 and 30. All channels are free-to-air and the broadcasters rent transmissions services directly from a transmitter operator, which is usually the Deutsche Telekom. ARD stations additionally use their own transmitters, too.
[edit] ARD network
As stated above, the ARD was the first German broadcasting station. It has a very federally oriented structure. Currently, nine regional TV stations cooperate together to produce programs for the TV network known as Das Erste (The First):
- Norddeutscher Rundfunk - North German Broadcasting - Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
- Radio Bremen - also a television broadcaster - Bremen
- Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg - Broadcasting Berlin-Brandenburg - Berlin and Brandenburg
- Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk - Central German Broadcasting - Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia
- Westdeutscher Rundfunk - West German Broadcasting - North-Rhine-Westphalia
- Hessischer Rundfunk - Hessian Broadcasting - Hesse
- Südwestrundfunk - South West Broadcasting - Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate
- Saarländischer Rundfunk - Saarland Broadcasting - Saarland
- Bayerischer Rundfunk - Bavarian Broadcasting - Bavaria
The fact that small regions like Bremen or the Saarland have their own broadcasting stations has mainly historical reasons. They only contribute to the nationwide TV program Das Erste and only have limited regional TV programs.
[edit] Satellite
Digital satellite television has been available in Germany since 1996. Most of the 30+ TV stations broadcast their satellite signal in both analogue and digital (DVB-S) forms. There is currently a single Pay TV satellite operation in Germany Premiere World, which (in form of its former owner Leo Kirch) got into serious fiscal trouble due to its early and proprietary (Betacrypt, d-box) enforcement of DTV.
Broadcast is always in DVB and SDTV PAL.
In autumn 2004 German channel group ProSieben showed a BBC documentary and a self produced TV movie, and in March 2005 the Hollywood flicks Spider-Man and Men in Black II using 1080i, MPEG-2 and DVB-S. These were intended to be a test for future commercial HD services.
Regular programming of the HD versions of ProSieben and Sat.1, both free to air, began on 26 October 2005 for at least one year. Most programming is upscaled SD material. Unlike the test broadcasts, DVB-S2 and MPEG-4 AVC is now used, because this is what the major pay TV service Premiere announced it was using.
Premiere itself, after several delays, finally started broadcasting three HD channels—one dedicated to each of movies, sports and documentaries—in November 2005, although there were virtually no suitable, certified receivers available on the market. The content is sparse and thus repeated often. Premiere reuses its proprietary digital rights management system embedded into its content scrambling system (Nagravision) from SD broadcasts to block analogue output of the movie channel from the receiving set-top box altogether, only allowing HDCP-secured transmissions; the other channels are less restricted.
For the time being, neither of the services is available via DVB-T nor DVB-C.
German channels producers and hardware companies hope for a breakthrough of HDTV sales just before the FIFA World Cup 2006 which will be broadcasted in HDTV on Premiere, also via cable. Big marketing was done at the IFA 2005. However, first reports seem to indicate flat panel TV sales have not picked up as much as anticipated.
HDTV is broadcast via Cable and Satellite on 2 channels. PremiereHD and AnixeHD. ProSiebenHD and Sat1HD have stopped broadcasting in HD until 2010.[1] All channels are broadcast using the h.264 codec. The public channels ARD and ZDF are considering starting their HDTV channel(s) in 2010, though it's still unknown how many channels will be broadcast and if terrestrial is going to be a part of their strategy to get HDTV into German living rooms.
[edit] Cable
Cable transmission is still mostly analogue with usually about 30 available channels. DVB-C transmission started in 2004 with the pay tv Premiere and a set of the digital versions of the analogue channels.
The rather late changeover to DVB was caused both by the long process of selling the infrastructure from former monopolist Deutsche Telekom to others and the fact that the cable network ends at the curb or property, with the in-house cable in large apartment buildings being operated by a different company. Due to this, the new owners of Deutsche Telekom's cable network were in many cases not able to offer new products directly to the viewer.
By 2006, there are three major cable operators, Unity Media in the states of Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, Kabel BW in Baden-Württemberg and the by far largest, Kabel Deutschland in the 13 other states. Today, all companies offer about 200 TV channels by DVB-C, which includes some 70 channels at no extra charge as well as a number of pay-per-view offers and subscription-based packages. In addition to that pay TV broadcasters Premiere (various genres) and, in some networks, Arena (offering Germany's premiere soccer league) are available.
In some very large apartment complexes a number of local and national companies operate an in-house cable network which is fed solely by its own satellite antenna on the building, not the local cable operator. The satellite channels are either transcoded into analogue transmission, receivable by any TV set without extra equipment, or into DVB-C.
[edit] Subscription channels
Also around the millennium was the heyday of Germany's sole subscription channel Premiere. Premiere offered telecasts of Germany's soccer Bundesliga. The "Bundesliga" was Premiere's cash-cow, but they lost the broadcasting rights in 2006 to a newly formed competitor, Arena. Furthermore, Premiere was the brainchild of the former television czar, Leo Kirch. Kirch went into insolvency after a struggling decade of losing viewers from his preceding subscription channel, DF1 (Digital TV 1). The company gained ground with its new manager Georg Kofler and now tries to get viewers back with buying new international shows from overseas and introduce them to the German audience (ABC's Lost was first shown on Premiere). Also Kofler and Kirch bought international movies from American films studios in advance so they can broadcast them one year after their release. Normally, American movies are shown on non-subscription (free-TV) channels after three years of their release, so Premiere benefitted from that advantage. Premiere highlights a combination of multiple channels featuring Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, Disney Channel and several themed channels for music, crime and sport.
Around 2005, several German cable companies created a new challenger to Premiere, ARENA. The participating companies are iesy (Hesse) and ish (TV) (North Rhine-Westphalia) through their combined partnership called "Unity Media". Arena, a rather small company tried to buy the pay-TV rights to the German Bundesliga and won by a decision of the marketing directorate of the DFL. The Bundesliga is a cash-cow on the German television market, so previous rights holders Premiere got a big blow into their concept of broadcasting. Arena holds the rights from 2006 to 2008. In 2008 there will be further negotiations for the broadcasting of the Bundesliga.
[edit] See also
- List of television stations in Germany
- List of German language television channels
- German television comedy
