The Local Germany

Up to 10 million people could be hit by threatened radio shut down

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 18:08:43 +0200

The airwaves across many parts of Germany could fall silent next week due to a financial dispute between radio stations and an FM broadcasting provider.

BSkyB to launch pan-European pay-TV giant

Fri, 25 Jul 2014 11:17:00 +0200

UPDATE: Rupert Murdoch's media empire 21st Century Fox has struck a mega deal with British satellite television group BSkyB to create a pan-European pay-TV giant, both companies said on Friday.

Germany picks Glorious song as Eurovision entry

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 08:48:00 +0100

Germany chose its entry to this year's Eurovision Song Contest on Thursday night - and the winner was a poppy dance number called Glorious.

Tom Hanks slates top German TV show

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:22:00 +0100

Tom Hanks slated Germany's favourite TV show, a mix of chat and challenges that baffles foreigners. "If that is not high quality television," he said of one scene when the Wetten, dass...? host hopped around him in a sack.

TV firms agree to turn down volume on adverts

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:49:00 +0100

German television viewers will no longer be blasted by loud adverts, now private broadcasters agreed to join state groups in turning down the volume of their adverts.

Gottschalk jumps to ARD after Wetten, dass ..? accident

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:38:00 +0200

In the wake of an on-air accident that left a young man paralysed after a botched stunt, TV presenter Thomas Gottschalk has quit broadcaster ZDF to host a new chat show on rival public network ARD.

German broadcasters to set up free internet TV

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:52:00 +0200

Germany’s two biggest commercial broadcasters, ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL, are establishing a free internet service that allows viewers to legally stream television shows, news and movies, they announced Friday.

Iran interferes with German news satellite

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:55:00 +0100

The German state foreign broadcasting network Deutsche Welle (DW) was the target of a deliberate jamming signal originating in Iran, according to a report in news magazine Der Spiegel.

PCs may be exempt from broadcast fee

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:58:00 +0100

Owners of computers with internet connections may in future not have to pay the dreaded broadcasting licence fee after a court ruled on Monday certain computers should be exempt.

ZDF editor shown the door amid political row

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:38:00 +0100

The conservative Christian Democratic Union won its bid late Friday to force out broadcaster ZDF’s editor-in-chief Nikolaus Brender in a move journalists, unions and opposition parties branded a major blow against media freedom.

Cat billed for GEZ television fee

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:55:00 +0100

Just another example of the Teutonic affinity to bureaucracy: The enforcers of Germany's hated GEZ broadcast licence asked a Bochum family cat to pay for its own TV and radio, daily WAZ reported on Friday.