566 FRANK BÖSCH AND CHRISTOPH CLASSEN
tween the two German states were as strong as in the case of radio and
television. Of course, this “spillover”—which referred to the ability to
receive radio and television programs from neighboring countries—was
not specifi c to the case of divided Germany. But, it had a particular sig-
nifi cance within the context of the German-German rivalry because there
were no language or cultural barriers that had to be overcome. Both sides
therefore made a huge eff ort to reach the population on the other side of
the Wall, and both feared that the propaganda coming from the other side
might prove to be too successful.^56 In the 1960s, West Germany sought
to dampen the harmful infl uence of GDR television, for example, by ex-
tending its television coverage into the morning hours and broadcasting
this television programming along the border with the GDR via special
facilities designed for this purpose. Given that many West Germans could
not even receive this programming on their televisions, the primary goal
was to reach the shift workers in the GDR; a separate morning program
was fi rst set up for the West in 1981.^57 Until the early 1970s, the GDR had
also broadcasted radio channels that targeted the West German popula-
tion, including its Deutschlandsender, Deutscher Soldatensender, and Frei-
heitssender 904.^58 At the same time, it did not quit jamming the popular
American RIAS radio station until the fall of 1978. It apparently did so
because this stood in the way of the eff orts of the GDR to achieve inter-
national recognition, but also because the eff ort to keep this up heavily
outweighed the eff ects.^59
What could be off ered on cross-border radio and how it was used dif-
fered between East and West. The way in which the country was divided
worked in favor of the West: the FRG had a broadcasting location right in
the middle of the GDR—in West Berlin—which made it easier to supply
the northern portion of the GDR in particular with Western television and
radio programming. Moreover, thanks to the long length of the border in
the south, it was basically possible to receive West German signals almost
everywhere in the GDR. It was only diffi cult to pick up Western terrestrial
signals in some smaller areas in the northeast and around Dresden (or
the signal was weak, which meant the picture quality was poor), which
lent this region the nickname “valley of the unaware.”
On the other side of the Wall, it was really only possible to receive GDR
television in West Germany relatively close to the border; even the GDR
radio stations had diffi culty penetrating the farther away regions in the
south and west of the Federal Republic. Nonetheless, East German radio
signals could be received across about half of West Germany and in the
major metropolitan areas such as Hamburg or the Ruhr Valley.
This imbalance between East and West was also evident in technical
infrastructure, the number of programs off ered, and broadcasting times.^60