German TV experiment aimed at pedestrians

Press, 9 August 1982, Page 11

German TV experiment aimed at pedestrians

By ROBERT WOODWARD NZPA-Reuter Koblenz West Germany

Shoppers in this sleepy town will be drawn into an experiment which could change the face of West German television. A newspaper chain in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate is aiming to circumvent the rigid laws governing broadcasting by advertising directly to passers-by through video cassettes. Pedestrians hurrying to the summer sales will be assailed by banks of television sets showing cassettes of local news and advertising at 10 strategic spots in the town centre. Walls of 30 sets will show 20 minutes of regional items and about 40 minutes of advertisements per hour. Juergen Engels of the re-cently-founded Rotavision GmbH says he hopes up to 40.000 people will be “caught” daily. “For legal reasons we are not allowed to transmit directly into people’s living rooms. But this cannot stop us developing a private alternative to television,” Mr Engels said.

According to the West German Constitution, “everyone has the right freely to express and to propagate his or her opinion in words, writing or images.” the Federal Constitution Court ruled in 1961 that the broadcasting media could be controlled neither by the central government nor by individual groups within society. Broadcasting comes under the jurisdiction of the individual states and previous attempts to set up private radio or television have been blocked by strong political resistance.

Mr Engels’ idea that “if the consumers will not come to television, television must go to the consumers” was initially challenged as illegal by local Social Democratic politicians.

But a spokesman for the Bonn Post and Telecommunications Ministry said that after lengthy discussion it had been agreed unanimously that the “Koblenz experiment” was legal. Experts decided the project was not strictly broad-

casting since the cassettes are placed in the video recorders by hand and not beamed from a central studio. The verdict came as a relief to Rhineland-Verlag, the newspaper chain involved, which has invested about $540,000 in the project. Other publishers and advertisers are watching the project with great interest because its success could acclerate changes in West German broadcasting, itself under fire from all sides.

Criticism of the stodgy fare served up by the three public television stations has mounted recently, ahead of a planned 25 per cent increase in licence fees.

High pay, overmanning and lavish spending have led many of the country’s 20 million owners of television sets to accuse them of wasting the $2.7 billion they take each year in fees. The stations have denied these charges. While United States companies sell about 200,000

hours of programme time to foreign stations each year. West Germany managed to interest foreign companies in only 10,300 hours in 1981. “It seems our broadcasting monopoly has gradually got out of control and can now hardly be run economically,” the political weekly. "Der Spiegel,” said recently. Cable TV

But this could change after a recent decision by Munich City Council to set up West Germany’s first pilot cable television project. From early 1983, 50,000 households will be able •to tune in to Austrian, Swiss and American Armed Forces television. Later up to 30 channels, mostly showing films, will become available. Similar projects are being considered in Dortmund, West Berlin and Ludwigshafen — only 150 km up the River Rhine from Koblenz.

Mr Engels is aware of the potential of working with cable TV but his first aim is to extend the Koblenz experiment, if successful, to the nearby cities of Bonn and Mainz.

•The signs are that his gamble could succeed. Faced with the enormous costs of normal television advertising, local businessmen are eager to use Mr Engels’ system. For $324, a local shopowner can promote his goods for one minute per hour for a whole week, and some have offered to set up a television bank on their own premises. Even local dentists have shown interest in installing Mr Engels’ screens in their waiting rooms ’to calm tattered nerves.