574 FRANK BÖSCH AND CHRISTOPH CLASSEN
Even before commercial radio and television got started in both Ger-
man states, entertainment and listener preferences had already become
more important. This trend had appeared across diff erent countries rel-
atively early in radio before reaching television as well. As a result, both
countries had to rely on foreign productions. The practical constraints as-
sociated with this led to tighter webs of German-German entanglements
in the form of programming exchanges—despite the fundamental oppo-
sition between the two systems.
In West Germany, this development fi t right in within the liberal con-
sumer society that had emerged, and it was even forced through commer-
cial radio. The GDR, in contrast, went on the defensive. For all intents and
purposes, it had opened itself up to the capitalist consumer culture of the
West, and it was being measured according to it. But this consumerism
contradicted the core of its political agenda, despite the fact that it could
not even keep up with the West. Radio and television developed across
the system divide—at least from the perspective of the recipients—into
consumer goods as well as powerful agents of consumer society. Conse-
quently, they ultimately undermined the political ideal of real socialism.
In 1984, the fi rst private television channels started airing in West Ger-
many, but this year hardly represented much of a break with the past for
most contemporaries. At fi rst, these channels appeared only within the
framework of temporary pilot projects with a limited spatial scope. Fur-
thermore, the installation of the necessary cable wires that were needed
as the technical foundation to support private cable television did not go
according to plan. The interest of the population in getting cable con-
nections lagged far behind initial expectations.^92 Accordingly—and not
least because of the extremely high level of investment required—the
fi nancial situations of the private channels remained diffi cult for a long
time. RTL-plus was the fi rst to make a profi t in 1992, followed by Pro 7
in the mid-1990s. They had been saved only by the fact that they had
been given terrestrial frequencies, which was not intended originally.^93
The high losses suff ered by private television at the beginning fostered a
consolidation process, ultimately leaving only two private television con-
glomerates to compete with the public TV channels. Both of these private
groups had their roots in print media: in addition to RTL/Bertelsmann,
there was the SAT.1 Group that was primarily owned by Springer-Verlag
and the fi lm rights agent Leo Kirch. They off ered scheduled television
that was fi nanced through commercials so that little, in fact, remained of
the vision of interactive communication that had played such a consid-
erable role in the debates over private TV (with the notable exception of
the not so popular “open channels”). Attempts to establish a profi table
form of pay TV as in other European countries failed at fi rst in the face of