MASS MEDIA IN DIVIDED GERMANY 583
potential for reform, a lack of trust in existing personnel, and an interest
in keeping a tight check on the competition coming from private televi-
sion contributed to the rapid dismantling of the GDR television system
under the leadership of Rudolf Mühlfenzl, the radio and television com-
missioner for the new federal states. The rights and property of GDR tele-
vision were turned over to the states at the end of 1991 or transferred to
the federal state media authorities that were still in the process of being
put into place.^125 A bit later, two multistate systems were set up with the
stations MDR (Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia) and the fusion of
SFB and ORB to rbb (Berlin and Brandenburg), while Mecklenburg-West-
ern Pomerania joined up with NDR. In the West, this model was also
replicated in the fusion of SDR and SWF. Only a few cases deviated from
this course, such as the privatization of the regional GDR radio station
Berliner Rundfunk or the merger of the former GDR channel Deutsch-
landsender Kultur with RIAS and Deutschlandfunk to form the national
radio station DeutschlandRadio.^126
Due to the sudden disappearance of old familiar stations, formats, and
programs in East Germany, as well as the recruitment of the majority of
the executive personnel from the West, the media was given a chance to
guide and absorb some of the impact of the change in everyday life in
East Germany. Yet the “shock therapy” (as the head of NDR at the time,
Jobst Plog, referred to it) that actually took place ensured a further loss
of trust in the media.^127 Indeed, citizens of the former GDR often felt as
if they were witnessing a “colonization” or “invasion” of sorts. Accord-
ingly, the regional public channels were later quite successful in the new
federal states with their “ostalgic” return to programs and symbols from
the East German past.^128
In place of the trusted, rather staid GDR television world, the East was
confronted with the overwhelming new dynamics of a “dual system” con-
sisting of commercial and public service providers. They now had a much
larger selection of programs and broadcasting times to choose from. As
of 1986, for example, Berlin had sixteen television channels, off ering a
total of 145 hours of programming a day; by 1992, city residents could
tune into thirty-four channels that aired a total of 493 hours of program-
ming per day, with more on the way.^129 The greater variety of program-
ming available through special-interest channels that popped up beside
the established broadcasters had an eff ect on both public and private
television. While the latter still had to make do with a very modest share
of the market in the second half of the 1980s (in 1987, RTL was at 1.3
percent, and SAT.1 came in at 1.5 percent), about the same number of
viewers tuned into each of the full-coverage channels ARD, ZDF, RTL,
and SAT.1 with a market share of about 15 percent in the 1990s.^130 The