| Type | Broadcast television network |
|---|---|
| Country | Germany |
| Availability | National; also distributed in: Austria Luxembourg Switzerland Liechtenstein Belgium Italy Netherlands Denmark Kosovo |
| Headquarters | Mainz, Germany |
| Key people | Markus Schächter, Director General |
| Launch date | 1 April 1963 |
| Official website | www.zdf.de |
Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (English: "Second German Television"), ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz (Rheinland-Pfalz). It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states (Bundesländer). The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues.[1] The ZDF is well known for its famous TV formats heute (newscast; established in 1963) and Wetten Dass...? (entertainment show; established in 1981).[2]
In 1961 the ZDF was founded by the federal treaty on the establishment of the public institution "Second German Television", after an uproar about the plan of the West-German federal government under Konrad Adenauer to set up a TV programme controlled by the federal government. The FRG constitution assigns regulation of culture and media to the federal states (Bundesländer). With a speech by the first director general (Intendant), Dr. Karl Holzamer, the station began broadcasting from Eschborn near Frankfurt am Main on 1 April 1963. The channel broadcast its first programme in colour in 1967. In 1974 the ZDF moved its present base of operations to Mainz-Lerchenberg, after briefly being located in Wiesbaden. The current director general Markus Schächter was elected by the ZDF Television Council in 2002.[2]
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The licences fees for Radio, TV and the New Media amount to € 17,98 per month, from 1 January 2009 on. For radio reception alone, the monthly fee is € 5.76. These fees are not collected directly by the ZDF but by the GEZ which is a common organisation of ARD, its members, ZDF and Deutschlandfunk. Every resident in Germany is obliged to pay these licence fees, but only in the case, if he/she has a radio, TV or another New Media.[3]
As ZDF is a channel, not a network, the channel is broadcast without any regional variation or affiliates throughout Germany, using a number of signal repeaters. ZDF transmitters have been switched from analogue to digital signal. This was a project which began in 2002 and was completed in 2008. Digitally, the ZDF group contains the main ZDF channel itself, 3sat, ZDFinfokanal (ZDF´s topical information and news channel), KIKA (children´s channel; daytime only), ZDFkultur (culture oriented), ZDFneo (youth oriented) and arte.[4] ZDF does not run any transmitters itself. Throughout the analogue days, all ZDF transmitters were run by the Deutsche Bundespost which was later privatised as Deutsche Telekom's subsidiary T-Systems Media Broadcast. (This is in contrast to the other public German broadcaster, ARD, which owns its main transmitters.) ZDF was not previously allowed to use ARD's transmitters. Changes to the law in the 1990s and since the digital switchover, ZDF uses both ARD and Telekom transmitters.
ZDF has also been relayed by cable since the days of the first cable pilot projects.
The first Europe-wide satellite broadcast via Astra 1C began in August 1993 during the Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (IFA - "International Broadcasting Exhibition") in Berlin. In the same decade, these new technologies were used to enable digital broadcasting of ZDF. Today, ZDF is available free-to-air throughout Europe via Astra 1H (19.2 degrees East) and Hotbird 6 (13 degrees East).
ZDF also operates the channels KI.KA, Arte, Arte HD, 3sat and Phoenix in cooperation with other networks. Included in its digital offering, called ZDFvision are the channels ZDFneo (formerly ZDFdokukanal), ZDFinfo, ZDFkultur (formerly ZDFtheaterkanal) and ZDF HD. Today ZDF is one of Europe's largest television networks.
Programme sales and acquisitions as well as international coproductions and a growing number of important activities in the field of the New Media are managed by a commercial subsidiary called ZDF Enterprises GmbH.
ZDF's animated station identity mascots, the Mainzelmännchen (a play on the words "Mainz" and "Heinzelmännchen"), created by Wolf Gerlach in 1963, quickly became popular and are still shown between commercials.[5] In 1976 graphic designer Otl Aicher made a corporate design for ZDF. A new design for ZDF was done by Lee Hunt in February 2000.
Administratively ZDF is headed by a director general (Intendant), who is elected by the ZDF Television Council, the composition of which is in turn determined by the "societally relevant groups" named in the ZDF contract. Since the founding of the network in 1963, the following have held the office of Intendant:
The supervising board controls the work of the intendant Markus Schächter. Especially they have a look at the budgeting. The supervising board consists of 14 members:
The Television board controls the ZDF and authorizes the budgeting. They also elect the intendant. The Television board consists of 77 members:
ZDF became a fully active member of the European Broadcasting Union in 1963. It has also a numerous individual cooperation agreements with broadcasters around the world.
ZDF is a supporter of the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) innitiative (a consortium of broadcasting and Internet industry companies including SES, OpenTV and Institut für Rundfunktechnik) that is promoting and establishing an open European standard for hybrid set-top boxes for the reception of broadcast TV and broadband multimedia applications with a single user interface.
Audience share (March 2008): 13.4%, from 14–49 years 7.1%.
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