Destination Unterföhring

German private television, 25 years after the »big bang«

»You are, this minute, witness to the launch of the first German private television broadcaster.« It was with these words that Jürgen Doetz launched the »Programmgesellschaft für Kabel- und Satellitenrundfunk« (PKS), from which Sat.1 emerged in 1985, in a cellar studio in Ludwigshafen on 1. January 1984. After stops in Mainz and Berlin, Germany’s first private TV broadcaster moved to Unterföhring, near Munich, in 2009. Private television station has, meanwhile, been broadcasting for 25 years and, in that time, it has thoroughly shaken up the German television market.

Minister President Horst Seehofer emphasised how important private television is for the industry location of Bavaria: »For our dual broadcasting system it is important that the private broadcasters are well positioned and that we, in Germany, have, with ProSiebenSat.1, a further big international media group.« This has been operating from Unterföhring already for years and has, with Pro Sieben, kabel eins and the news broadcaster N24, some of the biggest TV stations in Germany. Along with further specialist channels such as 9 Live or the German Weather Television, the group has considerably broadened the range of television programmes available.

»Sat.1, ProSieben and kabel eins together in Munich is, for me, the most important decision we ever made in the German market. For some, Unterföhring may only be a suburb but here you will find a density of creative TV-makers which is unparalleled in Germany.«

Andreas Bartl, Member of the Executive Board ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG

1984 – start of broadcasting

Yet German private television started out quite modestly. Only 1,200 households were able to receive the start of broadcasting of the PKS as part of the Ludwigshafen cable pilot project. From 1. April 1984, it was then possible to receive PKS also via the Munich cable pilot project. Germany’s first music broadcaster, Musicbox, which was based in Munich, also used the opportunity, right from the beginning, to broadcast via cable. New stations were launched throughout Germany only a few years later and small, special interest channels developed into full stations. In 1987 the Eureka TV station, which only two years later resulted in ProSieben, started broadcasting in Munich and, in 1988, Musicbox became Tele 5.

In the 1990s private broadcasting experienced a real boom thanks to increased broadcasting by satellite. During this period of new television stations including the German sports channel DSF, RTL II, tm3 and the home shopping channel H.O.T., Munich developed to the most important location. In 2002 Tele 5 was re-launched under the control of the old and the new programme boss, Jochen Kröhne, and, since 2005, Das Vierte has also been broadcast from Munich. Then, in 2006, DMAX was launched which is aimed primarily at a male audience.

Competition amongst the locations

The growing market also resulted in competition amongst the various locations. In this way the Munich suburbs of Unterföhring, Ismaning and Grünwald experienced, in only a short period, an unprecedented boom which would not have been possible without the emergence of the private broadcasters.
Not all new stations survived the battle for market shares and advertising revenue and some where restructured and »resuscitated« under new names. The most distinctive example here is probably tm3 which transformed from being the women’s channel to the »Champions League Station« before it changed, in 2001, to the first German »join in« station, 9Live, with call-in programmes.

Since the digitalisation of television from 2004 onwards, there has been an almost endless choice of channels which offer something for all tastes. The four stations, for example, of the Discovery Channel which is based in Munich, are dedicated to entertaining documentaries. With stations such as Sat.1 Comedy and Kabel Eins Classics, the ProSiebenSat.1 Group also launched its own digital special interest range. And, in addition to this, Maxdome was launched – a video on demand site which enables viewers to see international films as well as the group’s own produced series.

Cheap to finance and attention grabbing

Today this would be hard to imagine: before 1984 there really were only three TV stations and one daily finish time for broadcasting. Each programme was introduced by an announcer, the children’s programme had a good educational quality and, every evening, the nation would gather around the TV to watch the »Tagesschau« (the news). Suddenly, though, screens were taken over by cartoons and music clips, bare breasted female dancers and heated discussion groups. The early programmes of the private stations did not look particularly serious and they had to be as cheap to finance and attention grabbing as possible. Film rights dealer Herbert Kloiber remembers the beginnings of his station Tele 5.
»The team sat in the former butchers in Munich where Franz Josef Strauß had learnt and the presenters presented the news in the shop window. This was probably the first glass studio in Munich, it wasn’t bigger than 20 square metres.«

The private stations managed a quite a feat, though, namely making the viewer a star. Formats such as »Popstars« and »Big Brother« took over the screen en mass.
It was not only the battle for viewer figures which affected the ARD and the ZDF. The public broadcasters were increasingly copying the style of the attention grabbing private channels and even took over entire formats. ProSieben and co. reactivated numerous show forms which had long gone out of fashion. Ideas such as breakfast television, the afternoon magazine and the night journal as well as talk shows, were soon also seen with the established competitors. »Of course private television opened up areas which had previously been taboo and which weren’t liked by everyone,« adds Sat.1 presenter Hugo Egon Balder. »Until that point totally new paths were being taken which the public broadcasters would never have done and which are partly not taken, even today. Well, the one or the other programme may be rubbish or trivial but, how does one say, there is always a bit of rubbish amongst the lot.«

Critics easily forget that the private broadcasters not only considerably broadened the range of TV programmes but that they also provide quality. This applies particularly to news programmes and documentaries, for example »Talk im Turm« with Erich Böhme on Sat.1, which brought quality political discussions to television. The same station adapted the American concept of the satirical late night talk shows and made Harald Schmidt a star in doing so. The private stations also adapted the concept of television films, polished it up and produced elaborate TV movies which would be a credit for any cinema film.

Yet, according to Herbert Kloiber, there will not be a further generation of TV stations. »There will, of course, be further special interest channels yet these will not have any major implications on the overall market in the next three to five years. The question we need to look at, though, is how our television habits are changing.« It is also, not least, the internet which plays a role here as any innovations are more like to be found here than in television. On internet sites such as »My Video« from ProSieben, for example, some of the originality and boldness of the early private TV programmes has survived to the present day.

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