584 FRANK BÖSCH AND CHRISTOPH CLASSEN
growth in programming, as well as a series of smaller units such as com-
mercials, trailers, weather, or stock market updates, also changed per-
ceptions of time: they awakened a general impression of fragmentation
and acceleration. Initially, private channels made a name for themselves
by off ering niche programming dealing with sex and violence or action
adventure. Then, in order to protect their images, they transitioned into
more innovative talk formats (“confrontainment”) in the 1990s, satisfying
the human desire for voyeurism with relationship shows or reality TV. This
“explosion of intimacy” was countered by the public television broadcast-
ers who strengthened their profi les as providers of information, although
they did make some concessions to the style of the new competition. Not-
withstanding these changes, however, the public channels were much
less successful in East Germany than the private broadcasters. Without a
doubt, the commercialization of the media and the transformation of radio
and television into consumer goods took on a new dimension with the
growing success of the private stations and their focus on younger target
audiences, who were more relevant from an advertising perspective.
Furthermore, although the average amount of television consumption
remained fairly constant at around two hours a day until the mid-1980s,
this amount soon climbed rather quickly to over three hours.^131 In East
Germany, the average was about a half an hour more in all age groups.^132
East Germans also watched commercial television much more frequently,
and they were more interested in entertainment than information when
compared to people living in the old federal states.^133 Not only the diff er-
ent social circumstances in East and West after reunifi cation contributed
to this divergence, but also the greater distance vis-à-vis political content
that resulted from the experience of dictatorship in the East. This was
also further reinforced by what was seen as the “West German” perspec-
tive on East Germany propagated in the national media outlets.^134 Ac-
cordingly, the gap was also refl ected in the still much lower following for
national newspapers and news magazines in the former East. However,
the diff erences that still persist today rest primarily on the social and eco-
nomic divide between East and West that has by no means disappeared
over time, not just on regional background alone.^135
The combination of liberalization, pluralization, and individualization
that took place in the 1990s was a truly German phenomenon, but it hit
the East Germans with a much greater force. The transformation of radio
and television was also in and of itself part of this development. Yet, at
the same time, media content helped German society to deal with this
insecurity at both an individual and collective level, be it in the form of re-
sidual elements of life in the GDR in East German regional programming,
ritualized television news programs, or serial entertainment.^136