Der schwarze Kanal

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Der schwarze Kanal (English: The Black Channel) was an East German television propaganda programme made up of bowdlerized programmes from West Germany with an added Communist commentary. The programme was hosted by Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler and began on 21 March 1960.

The geography of the divided Germany meant that West German television signals could be received in all of East Germany except parts of Eastern Saxony (around Dresden, popularly called the "Valley of the clueless" because of this) and Brandenburg. Whilst radio signals from international broadcasters like the BBC and the American-backed local station Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor in West Berlin could be jammed, it was diplomatically and technically awkward to block West German television.

However, the West German ARD broadcasts reported on news that the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in the East would rather their citizens were not aware of; they also presented a lifestyle that was in marked opposition to that in the East.

The solution, as seen by Deutscher Fernsehfunk, was to record items from the ARD that were unwelcome in the East or provided a different spin on a news story and replay the items on the main DFF1 channel with a commentary "explaining" what was really "meant" by the item, or how the item was "untrue" or "flawed".

The programme was not popular in East Germany. In the book Stasiland, Anna Funder potrayed engineers in power stations as struggling to stop a blackout from the power surge due to East Germans switching off their sets when the programme came on.

The programme ceased broadcasting on 30 October 1989, just ahead of the opening of the borders with the west on 9 November, at which point the East German television service declared itself free of government interference. ^[1].