East Germans allowed to see West’s TV

Press, 2 May 1984, Page 12

East Germans allowed to see West’s TV

By

PAUL BOLDING,

NZPA-Reuter East Berlin The days are long gone when East Germans watching West German television risked having their aerials ripped down - the Communist authorities now. help them receive it with communal antenna systems.

Some 2.3 million homes — 40 per cent of the country’s TV viewers — are already connected to the cable aerials, whose official aims are to improve reception of domestic broadcasts and save valuable aluminium and copper. Diplomats say that the authorities have included West German television partly to defuse people’s frustration at not being able to visit a country with which many feel great affinity.

The cable systems make reception of Western TV possible where it was previously difficult. East Germans joke about the country’s third city, Dresden, as “the valley of the uninitiated” because it is located in a dip which prevents Western TV from reaching there.

Two East German channels compete for their audience with three West German ones transmitting from West Berlin, an enclave surrounded by the Communist State. East Germany also has easy reception of West German and West Berlin radio.

“It is by far the greatest exposure to Western media of any country in the Communist bloc — and it is in the same language,” one diplomat said. West German programme listings are not published in East German newspapers and travellers with TV magazines have them confiscated at the border.

Although audience figures

are collected, they are not released. A television source said that East German national programmes often won less than 10 per cent of the audience.

These include not only news and political programmes, which East Germans find boring, but also nonpolitical items such as a high-budget dramatisation last year of the life of Martin Luther.

An East German visiting the Reuter office during the national news said that he saw the programme only when calling on Western correspondents. East Germany screens a weekly attack on West German television’s international news reporting in a programme called “Der Schwarze Kanal” (the black channel). Its titles show a black German eagle landing on a television aerial. After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 — an event officially referred to in East Berlin as “securing the State boundary” — squads of youths were sent on to rooftops to rip down aerials facing the wrong way. Some party officials steadfastly refuse to watch broadcasts from the “class enemy.” Others try to disguise their viewing habits by locating their aerials beneath the roof. Cable saves them the trouble. A senior telecommunications official, Guenter Schulz, said there were plans to connect a further 200,000 of the country’s 5.8 million TV-owning households to antenna systems each year until 1990/

He said there was a potential saving in materials of $l2 million to $lB million for every 100,000 households. The disappearance of ugly forests of aerials was another benefit. The extent to which people will go to watch

West German television is;’ sometimes astounding. Fringe reception areas, not yet reached by the cable, J are dotted with huge and ; perilous-looking aerial ’ masts.

Other people without» “west fernsehen” go out of J their way to take holidays* in areas where it can be * seen.

No figures are kept foH the numbers who can’ receive foreign television. from the cable, but Mr Schulz indicated it could be around two-thirds of sub- ! scribers. Other neighbouring; countries’ stations are in- • eluded in border regions and Soviet television, received by satellite, is added to the cable in some J areas. ‘

Mr Schulz said the communal antenna systems used simple coaxial cable and normally could carry only six channels. But East Germany would conduct experiments on connecting homes to modern multichannel glass-fibre cable by 1990 and decide on further developments only afterwards.

Tests are being under-; taken in some East European countries on teletext, a; system whereby pages of J information may be called; on to television screens.

East Germany plans to introduce such a system this decade, probably using the British-developed standard,' used in West Germany rather than competing systems from France, Canada and Japan. The main interest in the system is for its use in providing the deaf with subtitles to television programmes. No “social need” is perceived for video-tex systems, in which are linked to telephones for * a variety of information J functions.