(EN) Episode 54 - Radio broadcasting in West Germany after 1945

This episode kicks off a longer series about broadcasting in West
Germany after 1945. The first thing I learned about this topic
was that there isn't really a single "West German broadcasting"
system, unlike East German broadcasting. East German broadcasting
was centrally organized, meaning there was essentially only one
broadcasting organization – at least until the diversification
that began in the 1960s and gave rise to stations like the youth
channel DT64.


In West Germany, broadcasting was structured federally from the
outset. This was partly due to tradition — broadcasting in the
Weimar Republic had also been federal — but also to practical
reasons: the federal states were operational before the federal
government. Thus, the first generation of state-level
broadcasting corporations emerged in the late 1940s. Several more
were added in the 1950s, and some restructuring took place. In
the 1960s, two national broadcasting corporations were
established — Deutsche Welle and Deutschlandfunk. Private
broadcasting emerged in the 1980s, and the last major
restructuring at the national level occurred in the 1990s,
primarily in East Germany with the establishment of RBB
(Broadcasting Berlin-Brandenburg) and MDR (Central German
Broadcasting), in the north with the restructuring of NDR
(North-German Broadcasting), and in Southwest Germany with the
merger of SWF (South-West Broadcasting) and SDR (South-German
Broadcasting) to form SWR (South-West German Broadcasting).


I will address all of this gradually, as far as possible. The
first episodes of this series will examine broadcasting in West
Germany from a broader perspective, looking at it as a whole.
Afterward, I will focus on the individual broadcasting
corporations, attempting to cover as much of the timeline as
possible — not just the period from 1945 to 1960, but also before
and after. The extent to which this will be possible naturally
depends on the availability of sources. At the moment, for
example, I lack proper sources for Deutsche Welle, DLF, and
broadcasting in East Germany after 1960, especially DT64 and its
restructuring in the 1990s. While sources do exist, I am
currently having difficulty obtaining them at reasonable prices.
Therefore, any gaps in my research will simply indicate a lack of
sources. The order in which the broadcasting corporations are
covered will be determined by the arrival and processing of
available sources, and nothing else.