Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), loosely translated to "Second German Television Service", is a public service German language television network based in Mainz. It is run as an independent non-profit agency under the authority of a joint contract by the Länder.

The station began broadcasting on April 1, 1963 in Eschborn. In 1967 the first program was shown in color. The ZDF moved to Mainz-Lerchenberg in 1974, after briefly being located in Wiesbaden.

Unlike American television networks, ZDF has no affiliates and re-broadcasts one signal over a large transmitter network throughout Germany. This is, unlike the stations of the ARD, run by T-Systems (daughter of Deutsche Telekom), and was formerly run by the German postal service . Like the ARD, the ZDF positioned many transmitters so that the channel could be received in vast parts of the GDR, where it had many viewers.

Since the first cable pilot projects, the ZDF is also fed into the cable systems. The first Europe-wide satellite broadcast via Astra 1C began in August 1993 during the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA - "International Broadcasting Exposition") in Berlin. In the same decade, these new technologies were used to start digital broadcasting of ZDF.

Since 2002, all major tv channels like the ZDF or the ARD can be received digitally via DVB-T around Berlin. In order to favor this means of transmission, the analog transmission of the channel via antenna was discontinued in the capital in August 2003. DVB-T continues to replace analog antenna transmission in Germany.

ZDF also operates the channels 3sat , Phoenix , arte and KiKa in cooperation with other networks. Included in its digital offering ZDFvision are the channels ZDF.infokanal , ZDF.dokukanal and ZDF.theaterkanal ..

The wholesome animated ZDF mascots, the Mainzelmännchen , created by Wolf Gerlach in 1963, became very popular and are still shown in between commercials.

Today the ZDF is the largest television network in Europe.

The ZDF is headed by an Intendant (director general), 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 people held the office of Intendant:

• 1963 - 1977: Prof. Karl Holzamer
• 1977 - 1982: Karl-Günter von Hase
• 1982 - 2002: Prof. Dr. h.c. Dieter Stolte
• since 2002: Markus Schächter

Shows

• Wetten, dass..?

External links

• Official ZDF Homepage (German)
• English language information

See also: List of German language television channels