Media and publishing

Broadcasting

Although German radio and television are not state-controlled, only public corporations were permitted to broadcast until the mid-1980s, when a dual system of public and commercial stations was established. Still, in 1986 the Federal Constitutional Court held that the public corporations comprised the “basic supply” of news and entertainment and commercial outlets were only a “supplementary supply.” Licensing and control of public broadcasting is under the Federal Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. Support for public broadcasting is provided by fees paid by the owners of radios and television sets.

The public corporations enjoy great freedom in establishing their own broadcasting policies. Attempts to control these policies, which are often hostile to incumbent governments, have been repeatedly rebuffed; thus, in practice, German television, more than radio, enjoys remarkable latitude and independence in what it broadcasts.

Public radio and television are arranged along national and regional lines, with a number of regional corporations that offered two to four radio programming schedules combining to form one evening television offering, ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Öffentlich-Rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten Deutschlands). This is complemented by a second television network, ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), which is based in Mainz. A third channel is operated by ARD but is organized and broadcast regionally, with special emphasis placed on local and regional events and school instruction, as well as on educational, informational, and fine arts programs. The uneven quality of entertainment in both radio and television is offset by the high-quality news coverage and political and social reporting that makes the German public one of the best-informed of any country.

Two radio stations—Deutschland Radio and Deutsche Welle—are publicly operated to provide a comprehensive German perspective of events; Deutsche Welle is beamed to Europe and overseas. There are also several regional public radio stations that provide localized programming and some 200 private radio stations that are regionally and locally focused.

By the early 21st century, cable and satellite television had achieved broad penetration throughout Germany. The cable and satellite networks offer extensive programming from public and commercial television in Germany and abroad. Germany switched its terrestrial television broadcast system from an analog signal to a digital one in 2008, and its satellite broadcast system changed to a digital signal in 2012. Digitization of the terrestrial signal greatly expanded the viewing options for the small percentage of homes that relied on an antenna to receive television broadcasts.

During the years of partition, viewers in East Germany could freely receive radio and television broadcasts from West Germany and from West Berlin, with the result that the public in East Germany kept current on news from the West. The broadcasting facilities in the former East Germany were reorganized along lines of the western states—i.e., each of the new states has its own regional stations.

The press

Germans are voracious readers of newspapers and periodicals. Freedom of the press is guaranteed under the Basic Law, and the economic state of Germany’s several hundred newspapers and thousands of periodicals is enviably healthy. Most major cities support two or more daily newspapers, in addition to community periodicals, and few towns of any size are without their own daily newspaper. In the 21st century most German newspapers and periodicals published daily or weekly editions on the Internet, enabling access far beyond their traditional print circulation.

The press is free of government control, no newspaper is owned by a political party, and only about 10 percent of newspapers overtly support a political party, though most offer a distinctly political point of view. Laws restrict the total circulation of newspapers or magazines that can be controlled by one publisher or group. The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) oversees German industry (including the media) to ensure against a company abusing its dominant position within a particular industry. Although newspaper and periodical ownership cannot be the monopoly of any one ownership, Axel Springer Verlag AG controls a significant share of the market. Other major newspaper publishers, some of which also publish magazines and other periodicals, include Gruner+Jahr AG (a Bertelsmann company), Süddeutscher Verlag, Bauer Media Group, and Hubert Burda Media. The German Press Council, established in 1956, sets out guidelines and investigates complaints against the press.

A national press exists on one level in the form of Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), Die Welt (Berlin), and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, together with regional newspapers (e.g., the Stuttgarter Zeitung, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (Essen), and the Frankfurter Rundschau), which also command international circulation and respect. Another level of the national press is represented by the universally circulated tabloid Bild (Hamburg), which has the largest readership of any paper and publishes several regional editions.

Berlin has many daily newspapers, including the liberal Der Tagesspiegel, the conservative Berliner Morgenpost, and the Berliner Zeitung, which had originally been published in East Germany. The Berliner Zeitung was acquired by western press interests after unification and swiftly gained recognition as the city’s preeminent newspaper. Other leading newspapers of the former East Germany were also bought by western publishers.

The major edition of German newspapers, replete with politics and arts features, is published on Saturday. A lively Sunday press complements the daily newspapers, providing an overview, perspective, and interpretation of major news developments as well as political comment and artistic criticism; the most prestigious and influential of these is Die Zeit (Hamburg). Sunday counterparts of the major dailies, Welt am Sonntag and Bild am Sonntag, are run virtually as separate newspapers, competing with the other weeklies.

The genre of the Illustrierte (pictorial) dominates the German magazine market. Some of these popular weekly glossies, such as Stern and Bunte, carry features, including investigative reporting, of a high calibre; others, however, cater to an unquenchable public thirst for the escapades of celebrities, bizarre crime, the annals of gracious living, and sundry escapist topics. Apart from a wealth of specialized journals and quality business-oriented magazines, the role of high-prestige magazines of opinion is largely subsumed by the weighty weekend editions of the quality press.

A special niche is occupied by the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel, a journalistic power in its own right, which, since its founding in the period immediately after World War II, has shaped public opinion in Germany through its editorial posture as the skeptical, nonaligned observer and guardian of the public conscience. Exhaustive in its coverage and polemical in tone, it features thorough, critical investigations of events from both the past and the present.

Publishing

Germany has some 2,000 publishing houses, and more than 90,000 titles reach the public each year, a production surpassed only by the United States. Germany traditionally was home to small and medium-size publishing houses. However, the Bertelsmann group, a multinational conglomerate based in Gütersloh, is now one of the world’s largest publishers. Book publishing is not centred in a single city but is concentrated fairly evenly in Berlin, Hamburg, and the regional metropolises of Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and Munich. Leipzig, prewar Germany’s major publishing city, shared with East Berlin the major publishing houses of East Germany. Gotha in Thuringia is renowned for the production of maps and atlases. By law, book prices are fixed at the publisher level, a practice that tends to favour the smaller independent bookstores that are prevalent throughout Germany.