Deutsche Welle

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The Deutsche Welle building in Bonn
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The Deutsche Welle building in Bonn
This article is about the German international broadcaster. For information on the musical genre, see Neue Deutsche Welle

Deutsche Welle or DW-TV is Germany's international broadcaster. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave and satellite radio in 29 languages, and has a satellite television service that is available in three languages. Deutsche Welle, which in English means "German Wave," is similar to international broadcasters such as the BBC World Service, Voice of America, and Radio France Internationale.

Deutsche Welle has broadcast regularly since 1953. Until 2003 it was based in Cologne, but relocated that year to a new building in Bonn's former government office area. The television broadcasts are produced in Berlin. Deutsche Welle's World Wide Web site is produced in both Berlin and Bonn.

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History

A first broadcasting agency called Deutsche Welle GmbH was founded in August, 1924, seated in Berlin. It was a common corporation of all Germany's regional broadcasters.

The new Deutsche Welle established in 1953 was a completely different institution. It was inaugurated on May 3, 1953, with its first shortwave broadcast, an address by German President Theodor Heuss. On June 11, 1953, the public broadcasters in the ARD signed an agreement to share responsibility for Deutsche Welle. At first, it was controlled by Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR). In 1955, when this split into the separate Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) networks, WDR assumed responsibility for Deutsche Welle programming.

In 1954, Deutsche Welle started to broadcast programming in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

In 1960 Deutsche Welle became an independent public body, which on June 7, 1962 joined the ARD as a national broadcasting station. Also in 1962, service was added in other languages: Persian, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and Serbo-Croat (now separate Serbian and Croatian services). In 1963 these languages were joined by Swahili and Hausa, Indonesian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Slovenian services. In 1964 and 1970 the linguistic plurality was extended another time to include Greek, Italian, Hindi and Urdu, as well as Pashtu and Dari. In 1992, Albanian was added, and in 2000, DW began its Ukrainian service.

With German reunification in 1990, Radio Berlin International (RBI) of the GDR ceased to exist. Some of the staff and personnel of RBI joined the Deutsche Welle, and it inherited some broadcasting apparatus, including the transmitting facilities at Nauen as well as RBI's frequencies.

DW-TV began as RIAS-TV, a television station launched by the West Berlin broadcaster RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) in mid-1989. The fall of the Berlin Wall later that year and German reunification in 1990 meant that RIAS was to be closed down. On April 1, 1992, Deutsche Welle inherited the RIAS-TV broadcast facilities, using them to start a German and English language television channel broadcast via satellite, DW TV, adding a short Spanish broadcast segment the following year. In 1995 it began 24-hour operation (12 hours German, 10 hours English, 2 hours Spanish). At that time, DW TV introduced a new news studio and a new logo.

Deutsche Welle took over some the former independent radio broadcasting service Deutschlandfunk's foreign language programming in 1993, when Deutschlandfunk was absorbed into the new DeutschlandRadio.

In late 1994, Deutsche Welle was the first public broadcaster in Germany with a World Wide Web presence (www.dwelle.de), although for its first two years the site listed little more than contact addresses. This later evolved into the current 30-language Web site DW-WORLD.DE.

In 2001 Deutsche Welle joined with ARD and ZDF to found the German TV pay TV channel for North America. It was announced in 2005 that it would be shut down, after subscriber numbers failed to approach expectations.

Unlike most other international broadcasters, DW TV does not charge terrestrial stations for use of its programming, and as a result its News Journal and other programs are rebroadcast on numerous public broadcasting stations in several countries, such as the United States and Australia.

Deutsche Welle is still suffering from financial and personnel cuts. Its budget was downsized by about €75 million over five years and of the 2,200 employees it had in 1994, 1,200 remain. Further cuts are still expected.

In 2003, the German government passed a new "Deutsche Welle Law", which defined DW as a three-media organization -- making DW-WORLD.DE an equal partner with DW-TV and DW-RADIO. DW-WORLD.DE is available in 30 languages, but focuses on German, English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese for Brazil and Chinese. Arabic became the seventh focus language on January 2005.

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Shortwave transmitters

Wertachtal, Bavaria

  • 18 x 500 kW SW transmitters
  • 24 HR-type curtan array antennas

Nauen, Brandenburg

  • 4 x 500 kW SW transmitters, each with Thomcast rotating antenna
  • GDR-era transmitting antennas on standby

Julish, Sri Lanka

DW leases time on the following relay stations

  • R1
  • R2
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General Directors

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Deutsche Welle services

  • DW-RADIO: shortwave, satellite, and digital radio broadcasting in 29 languages, with a 24-hour service in German and English
  • DW-TV: satellite television broadcasting mainly in German (usually in the odd hours UTC, thus the even hours in Germany), and English (usually in the even hours UTC), with brief segments in other languages (particularly Spanish in the 11pm hour UTC)
  • DW-WORLD.DE: 30 language website
  • German TV: German-language pay TV, by DW, ARD, and ZDF - Website
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External link

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Welle"
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