568 FRANK BÖSCH AND CHRISTOPH CLASSEN
Consequently, all the eff orts made by the SED leadership to convince
the population to turn off the whisperings of the class enemy, even with
repressive means, were not very successful in the end. Although it was
taboo to track the TV ratings for West German programs in the GDR, their
immense popularity can still be determined indirectly. For example, the
GDR’s own statistics indicated that only one-third of the GDR population
still watched the main East German evening television programming in
1982,^61 which indirectly implies that an average of approximately 20 to 25
percent tuned into West German prime time television.^62 Accordingly, by
the 1970s and 1980s at the latest, it appears to have become quite natural
for large portions of the GDR population to complement their East Ger-
man media intake with West German media content. The situation in the
West was diff erent, though. Although about half of West Germans could
listen to at least one East German radio station if they wanted to even in
the 1950s and 1960s, only a small majority occasionally tuned in to these
channels. East German talk radio also had a very negative image in West
Germany.^63 Indeed, the Germans seemed to belong to a “common radio
and TV nation” from an East German perspective more so than from a
West German one, although West German programming was in fact the
common denominator between the two.^64
Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, the attempts to infl uence the
population on the other side of the Wall decreased in both Germanys.
There were only a few West German radio and television programs, such
as the highly conservative show ZDF Magazine with Gerhard Löwenthal
(1969–1987), that dealt off ensively with the GDR. For the most part, their
programming was directed exclusively at the West German population.
Over the course of the 1970s, the GDR discontinued its radio propaganda
aimed at the West, it quit jamming the West German stations, and it
mostly stopped using repressive measures to crack down on receiving
signals from the West. As the new head of the GDR, Erich Honecker even
issued a public statement to the eff ect that everyone could “tune into or
turn off West German television as they wished.”^65 Yet, the attempts to
establish a political line of demarcation between the two countries and
to immunize the population against external propaganda never disap-
peared entirely in the GDR. This was refl ected, for example, in the con-
tinued production of the program Der Schwarze Kanal with Karl-Eduard
von Schnitzler until the fall of 1989. This show was designed to immunize
East Germans against the infl uence of West German TV by commenting
on snippets taken from West German programming.
In the 1980s, the GDR even tolerated satellite receivers that had been
built secretly by local groups in order to be able to receive private West
German television channels.^66 Although the overarching organs of the