Deutsche Welle

From Free net encyclopedia

(Difference between revisions)
Revision as of 06:53, 19 April 2006
24.111.50.26 (Talk | contribs)

Next diff →

Current revision

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

Image:Deutsche Welle.pngDeutsche Welle or DW 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.

Image:Bonn DeutscheWelle Posttower.jpgDeutsche 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.

Contents

[edit]

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 / Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor) 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. DW-TV has replaced German TV as a pay service in the United States.

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.

[edit]

Shortwave relay stations

[edit]

Domestic Shortwave Relay Stations

Shortwave transmitter Wertachtal, Bavaria

  • 18 x 500 kW SW transmitters
  • 24 HR-type curtan array antennas, providing global coverage

Nauen, Brandenburg

  • 4 x 500 kW SW transmitters, each with Thomcast rotating antenna
  • GDR-era rotatable SW antenna on standby (unique design)

Shortwave transmitter Jülich

[edit]

External Shortwave Relay Stations

Trincommalee, Sri Lanka

  • 4 x 250 kw SW transmitters (? verify)
  • 20 antennas (?)

Kigali, Rawanda

  • site destroyed by 1990s civil war
  • presently nominally operational
[edit]

Relay Stations leasing transmitter time to DW

DW leases time on the following relay stations

[edit]

DW output compared to other broadcasters (1950–1996)

External total direct programme hours per week of some external radio broadcasters:

  1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1996
United States of America 497 1495 1907 1901 2611 1821
Chinese People's Republic 66 687 1267 1350 1515 1620
United Kìngdom (BBC) 643 589 723 719 796 1036
Russia 533 1015 1908 2094 1876 726
German Federal Republic 0 315 779 804 848 655
Egypt 0 301 540 546 605 604
Iran 12 24 155 175 400 575
India 116 157 271 389 456 500
Japan 0 203 259 259 343 468
France 198 326 200 125 379 459
Netherlands 127 178 335 289 323 392
Israel 0 91 158 210 253 365
Turkey 40 77 88 199 322 364
North Korea 0 159 330 597 534 364
Bulgaria 30 117 164 236 320 338
Australia 181 257 350 333 330 307
Albania 26 63 487 560 451 303
Romania 30 159 185 198 199 298
Spain 68 202 251 239 403 270
PortugaI 46 133 295 214 203 226
Cuba 0 0 320 424 352 203
Italy 170 205 165 169 181 203
Canada 85 80 98 134 195 175
Poland 131 232 334 337 292 171
South Africa 0 63 150 183 156 159
Sweden 28 114 140 155 167 149
Hungay 16 120 105 127 102 144
Czech Republic 119 196 202 255 131 131
Nigeria 0 0 62 170 120 127
Yugoslavia 80 70 76 72 96 68

Notes

  1. USA includes VOA (992 hours per week), RFE/RL (667 hpw), Radio Marti (162 hpw) – 1996 figures.
  2. Since the break-up of the former USSR in 1991, only Russia's output is shown.
  3. 1996 figure for Czech Republic (created 1.1.1993), previous years for former Czechoslovakia.
  4. At the time of going to press, South Africa's external service's future is in doubt, and Nigeria's external service is off air.
  5. The list includes about a quarter of the world's external broadcasters whose output is both publicly funded and worldwide. Among those excluded are Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea and various international commercial and religious stations.
  6. 1996 figures as at June; all other years as at December.

Source: International Broadcast Audience Research, June 1996.

[edit]

General Directors

[edit]

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
[edit]

External links

de:Deutsche Welle es:Deutsche Welle fr:Deutsche Welle nl:Deutsche Welle ja:ドイチェ・ヴェレ pt:Deutsche Welle ru:Немецкая волна fi:Deutsche Welle zh:德国之声

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/Deutsche_Welle"