Lens (TV broadcast)

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Objectively it was a broadcast on GDR television . The first edition of the series aired on February 25, 1965. Ulrich Makosch was the long-time director and presenter of the series .

Content and profile of the broadcast

The magazine initially presented the GDR's view of the rest of the world in 45 minutes per broadcast, and from 1973 onwards it was 35 minutes. With the political recognition of the GDR, it met the increasing desire of its citizens to have their own perspective on other countries form. The journalist Erich Selbmann stated: “As part of the program reform, the journalists tried to further develop the large foreign reports and adapt them to the new conditions of the time.” The program focused on the growing together of the socialist community of states and international solidarity.

Background to the production

The full title and subtitle was Lens. - Facts - Backgrounds - Contrasts. The “objectivity” presented was determined by the party (SED) and the government of the GDR. The procurement of materials was a specialty. Since the GDR was not yet recognized as a state in the West in the 1960s and early 1970s, no independent network of correspondents was available. A television agency in Sweden hired cameramen to deliver footage for GDR television with background information for the program Lens. In the late 1960s, a network of unofficial correspondents was also established in Western countries. Although the journalism sector achieved stable audience ratings with the other programs Prisma , Umschau , Urania and even the agitative program The Black Channel , the magazine Lens was increasingly unable to meet the expectations of its viewers with its foreign policy portrayal of the GDR's perspective in the 1980s. At the beginning of the 1980s, the show still had viewer ratings of up to 12.2 percent, but by 1988 the rate fell to just four percent.

In the course of the political changes in the GDR in 1989/1990, the political magazines came under pressure. In 1987 the television party management admitted the dissatisfaction of the public and the turn to western television. Heinz Adameck , SED functionary and chairman of the State Committee for Television, asked the Lens editorial team to go beyond general statements and well-known arguments without questioning the SED's policies. While the domestic politics magazine Prisma had been one of the most popular broadcast formats of GDR television since it started broadcasting in 1966 with its realistic representation of the problems of everyday life in the GDR and continued to broadcast until the DFF was discontinued, the program Lens together with the Black Channel was one of those with the SED system to closely related television programs that were discontinued after the fall of the Wall. The successor to the program on German television (DFF) was the program Meridiane from March 23, 1990 (until the DFF was shut down in December) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Klaus Behling: Television from Adlershof: The television of the GDR from the start to the end of the broadcast. Edition Berolina, 2016. ISBN 3958415296 , ISBN 9783958415294 . (Section 'The bobbing flagship »AK«' online at Google Books)
  2. ^ Political magazines on television in the GDR. Federal Agency for Civic Education, August 30, 2012, accessed on June 8, 2019
  3. ^ A b Franca Wolff: Glasnost shortly before the end of broadcasting: the last years of GDR television (1985-1989 / 90). Volume 18 of Media Past and Present, ISSN 1611-793X. Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar, 2002. ISBN 3412086029 , ISBN 9783412086022 . (Online at Google Books)
  4. ^ Jürgen Wilke: Journalists and Journalism in the GDR: Professional Organization, Western Correspondents, "The Black Canal". Volume 23 of Media Past and Present, ISSN 1611-793X. Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar, 2007. ISBN 3412362050 , ISBN 9783412362058 . (P. 232 online at Google Books)
  5. ↑ Evidence of a “television turnaround”: series of GDR television programs in 1989 and 1990. Website of the German Broadcasting Archive, accessed on June 8, 2019