MASS MEDIA IN DIVIDED GERMANY 557
to rein in diff erences of opinion, and to save money. Additionally, this
tapped into the tradition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD) before 1933, both of which strove
to establish a centralized party press. In the West, the consolidation of
the press achieved a very similar level when compared to the respective
population data. The number of independent papers continued to drop
dramatically in the 1970s, slipping from 225 in 1953 to 124 in 1981 with
1,258 local editions; the number of newspaper publishing houses also
sank by a third. On average, each editorial board published about eleven
editions in the West, compared to eight in the East.^22 As a result, the num-
ber of counties in which the local paper enjoyed a monopoly increased in
the West; this was already the case in a third of the local counties in the
mid-1970s, but it had occurred in half of them by the time the Wall came
down. The variety of the press in the West, however, was not too large
concerning tabloids. Among the papers sold on the streets, the tabloid
BILD accounted for over 80 percent of the market, and its publisher, Axel
Springer, became the strongest newspaper publisher by far.
In terms of popular magazines, both the circulation fi gures and the
number of titles doubled. Whereas the readership for city magazines and
specialist magazines for diff erent hobbies, sports, or lifestyles grew, the
classic illustrated magazines lost readers. The circulation of the Ham-
burg-based magazine Stern, for example, began to decline in 1980, but
some once-successful illustrated magazines such as Bunte, Neue Revue,
and Quick had already begun to lose readers in the 1970s; some of them
even disappeared entirely (including Kristall in 1966, and twen in 1971).
Here, too, the growing strength of individual publishing houses, such as
Burda, Bauer, or Gruner + Jahr, led to a concentration of ownership in
the magazine world. Contrary to what was often assumed, it was not tele-
vision that pushed many smaller publishers out of business, but rather a
general process of economic consolidation, as well as the pressure cre-
ated by advertising customers who preferred to invest their money in
media with higher circulations. Indeed, if it had not been for tighter legal
restrictions, especially the act governing press mergers from 1976, and
the regular media reports of the West German government, the consoli-
dation of the press in the Federal Republic would most likely have been
even stronger.^23 At the end of the 1970s, however, a phase of stabilization
set in, just as it did in the GDR. The 1980s stood for consistency in the
press world, although a far-reaching restructuring process engulfed the
airwaves.
Since the Kaiserreich, the German daily newspapers had been linked
traditionally to individual parties or political movements. Since the Nazis
destroyed most of the party papers or had assimilated them into their re-