The Media during the Cold War | 143changes in Western programming, and they responded by altering their own
programme formats – from crime thrillers to political roundtables.
Whereas research into viewing and listening habits was well established in
the West, the SED media had little knowledge of their audience. The infre-
quent surveys they conducted were hardly adequate for registering Western
television and radio consumption. Our present-day knowledge of GDR media
behaviour is based on various sources. Surveys conducted in the West German
refugee camp in Friedberg among people who were relocating from the GDR
have shown that about 82 per cent of them watched Western TV programmes
‘nearly every day’, and a further 12 per cent watched them ‘often’, especially
political programmes like the ‘Tagesschau’ and news magazine programmes.
While West German television films aroused some interest, American ones
were watched less often (Dussel 1999: 176f.). Subsequent surveys conducted
by Michael Meyen qualify this to a degree: according to his findings, GDR
radio broadcasts accounted for about half of the listening time, as people
enjoyed listening to regional news and music (Meyen 2003: 128–37).
Thus was the Cold War waged in the media. Radio especially was often uti-
lised in this way during the 1950s and 1960s. Besides the ‘Deutschlandsender
der DDR’ many smaller GDR broadcasters also targeted West Germans, for
example the ‘Deutscher Freiheitssender 904’, that was intended to suggest
the presence of ongoing underground activity by the recently outlawed KPD;
night-time programmes for West German shift workers or ‘Radio Berlin
International’, that was broadcast internationally in many different languages
(Dussel 1999: 136). Since the number of listeners remained very low, the GDR
eventually closed down these channels. It would be worth examining more
closely the degree to which a West German audience tuned in to normal GDR
television programming. One may assume that in addition to entertainment
programmes (like Ufa films, sports or the children’s programme Sandmän-
nchen) people watched political programmes out of curiosity, perhaps with an
ironic eye, perhaps as a ‘corrective’ for the Western media. Be that as it may,
the influence of the Stasi on Western media has probably been overestimated
by a few publications, although several journalists in the Federal Republic of
Germany have discovered some evidence of Stasi activity (Knabe 2001).
As for the GDR press, one is struck by its high circulation figures: the
number of daily newspapers rose from 4 million in the 1950s to 9.7 million
in 1988, a number exceeded only by Japan. Many people subscribed to several
newspapers. To be sure, these numbers were made possible because prices were
kept low by state subsidies, as there were very few classified advertisements in
Socialism. Later surveys reported that circulation was so high because people
were interested in the local sections, and the papers could be used as wrapping
material (Meyen 2003: 105–8). At the same time high circulation numbers
may be seen as indicating a certain approval of the regime; however, emotional