Deutsche Welle or DW is the international broadcaster of Germany, utilising shortwave and satellite for radio and television broadcasts in 29 languages. DW also has a 30-language online presence. It is also a participant in Digital Radio Mondiale. Deutsche Welle, which in English roughly means "German Wave", is generally comparable to international broadcasters such as the BBC World Service, Voice of America, or Radio France Internationale .

Deutsche Welle has broadcast regularly since May 3, 1953. Until 2003 it was based in Cologne, but in honour of its 50^th birthday, it was relocated to a building in Bonn's old government office area, where the radio broadcasts are produced. The television broadcasts are produced in Berlin. DW-WORLD.DE, the Deutsche Welle's Internet presence, is produced in both Berlin and Bonn.

History

A first broadcasting society called Deutsche Welle GmbH was founded in August, 1924, seated in Berlin. It was a common corporation of all Germany's regional broadcasters.

But the new Deutsche Welle established in 1953 is a completely different institution. The history of this new Deutsche Welle began on May 3, 1953, with its first shortwave broadcasting in German. It was directed at Germans all over the world and spoken by the then-President of Germany, Theodor Heuss. On June 11, 1953, the public broadcasters in the ARD signed a treaty to establish the common short wave radio programme "Deutsche Welle". It was first lead by the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR), later by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR).

In 1954, the Deutsche Welle started to broadcast programmes in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

In 1960 the "Deutsche Welle" became an independent public body, which on June 7, 1962 joined the ARD as a national broadcasting station. Also in 1962 the programme was extended to other languages: Persian, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Serbian and Croatian. In 1963 these languages were joined by programmes in Swahili and Hausa, Indonesian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Slovenian. In 1964 and 1970 the linguistic plurality was extended another time to include: Greek, Italian, Hindi and Urdu, as well as Pashtu and Dari.

From 1963 the Deutsche Welle has sent copies of movies to television stations.

With the re-unification of the two German states in 1990, the Radio Berlin International (RBI) of the GDR ceased to exist. Some of the staff and personnel of RBI joined the Deutsche Welle as well as some broadcasting apparatuses and frequencies.

On April 1, 1992, Deutsche Welle started a German and English language television programme (DW TV). The programme is broadcast via satellite, and was later extended to Spanish and Albanian. The former RIAS-TV programme was included into DW TV.

After the restructuring of the public broadcasting structure on the national level in 1994, which consisted mainly in the inclusion of the former independent radio broadcasting service Deutschlandfunk into the DeutschlandRadio, the Deutsche Welle took over some of Deutschlandfunk's foreign language programmes in 1993.

In 1994, Deutsche Welle was the first public broadcaster in Germany with its own World Wide Web presence (www.dwelle.de). It now has a 30-language Web site DW-WORLD.DE.

Another language expansion came in 2000 with an Ukrainian programme.

In 2001 Deutsche Welle started the German TV programme for North America, viewable via pay TV. Several DW programs are widely syndicated on public-broadcasting stations in the US, and WNVC (aka the MHz Network) in Northern Virginia/DC and KMTP in San Francisco also devote a significant portion of their broadcasting week to carriage of DW programming, as does the Pennsylvania Cable Network.

The Deutsche Welle is still suffering from financial and personnel cuts. Its budget was cut by about €75 million in 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 7^th focus language on January 2005.

Intendants

• October 12 1960 - February 29 1968: Dr. Dr. rer.pol. h.c. Hans Otto Wesemann
• March 1 1968 - February 29 1980: Walter Steigner
• March 1 1980 - December 8 1980: Conrad Ahlers
• December 19 1980 - June 30 1981: Dr. Heinz Fellhauer (commissary)
• July 1 1981 - June 30 1987: Klaus Schütz
• July 1 1987 - June 30 1989: Dr. Heinz Fellhauer
• July 1 1989 - March 31 2001: Dieter Weirich
• April 1 2001 - September 30 2001: Dr. Reinhard Hartstein (commissary as deputy intendant)
• since October 1 2001: Erik Bettermann

Programmes of Deutsche Welle

• DW-RADIO: radio broadcasting in 29 languages, with a 24 hour programme in German and English
• DW-TV: television broadcasting in German, English and Spanish, windows in other languages
• DW-WORLD.DE: 30 language website
• German TV: German language pay-TV, by DW, ARD and ZDF - Website

External link

• DW-WORLD.DE
• germanizer.com
• campus-germany.de Study and Research in Germany - Deutsche Welle portal
• The Bobs Deutsche Welle International Weblog Award