Business Broadcasting
The Wirtschaftsrundfunk was a service set up by the Reich Ministry of Post in September 1922 to distribute business news, in particular stock exchange prices, via radio waves. His receivers were subscribers with receivers manufactured by C. Lorenz and Telefunken .
History and meaning
Express service for commercial news
The service's first official name was Wireless Economic Broadcasting . The news of the business broadcasting came from the editorial office set up by the foreign trade office of the Foreign Office especially for business broadcasting on December 30, 1922 under the name Eildienst for official and private commercial news GmbH - colloquially express service . The messages spoken into a microphone in Berlin's Bunsenstrasse 2 first ran over a cable to Königs Wusterhausen and were then wirelessly transmitted over a wavelength of 4000 meters by antennas there. The nationwide telephone network was used for this purpose. The subscribers were not only informed of the exact transmission times by letter, but also received tables to assign the information received. The Post had built in this hurdle, which many customers found annoying, because they saw great damage in the unauthorized wiretapping of the business broadcasting and prosecuted these violations.
Decryption
At a certain time of the day, the customer switched on his device and (at that time typically) put on headphones. Next to the device he put lists sent by the operators. If the transmission began with the word "Karl", the recipient looked up a list and found that Karl means: New York Stock Exchange . He then found the slip for New York, which contained a list of important stocks and quotations, but without quotations . This gave the voice over the business radio; the recipient wrote one number after the other one below the other, just as he had just heard them, and at the end had the current “exchange rate slip” from New York, which was no more than half an hour old.
Five departments
The express service of the business broadcaster had five departments: the economic , the wireless, the Berlin subscription, the technical and the stock exchange department. The latter sat in an office in the Berlin stock exchange , from where it was also possible to send directly to Königs Wusterhausen. There were branches in 29 cities in the Reich that received the Berlin broadcasts via air and, if necessary, delivered them to customers by wire. There the customers could also inquire by phone if they had not understood something acoustically. The Berlin subscription department was necessary because business broadcasting in Berlin did not take place over the air, but wired, and therefore required other receiving devices.
Customers
The customers were banks and commercial enterprises, but not representatives of the press. The dissemination of business radio information was even explicitly prohibited. They didn't want to ruin the business for this highly topical exclusive service. The Reichspost distributed "softer" economic information via the press broadcasting system , which had been launched two years earlier - in 1920 - and which took the same route from Berlin to distribute political and economic news to newspaper editors throughout the Reich. In 1922 experiments were also carried out with the wireless transmission of music and speeches. This resulted in entertainment broadcasting in 1923 , i.e. the basis of today's broadcasting . Parallel to the business broadcasting aimed at Germany, another editorial office in the same building served other countries. This distribution channel was called Europradio .
Postrat Borgsmüller defined the tasks of the express service with three points:
- The advertising and obligation of private recipients, as well as the procurement, compilation and delivery of the news to be distributed is the responsibility of Eildienst GmbH
- All the technical facilities are taken care of by the Reich Telegraph Administration and are maintained by it.
- it is up to the participants to record the messages.
Inflation period and dissolution
Business broadcasting gained its greatest importance the year after its launch: due to the hyperinflation during the economic crisis with its dramatic price fluctuations, business people were dependent on timely information; Speculators hoped for high profits because of the unpredictable exchange rates. The express service had 1,800 paying customers. In 1924 the number reached its maximum with 3,000 subscribers. When the economic situation had calmed down, the number of subscribers dropped to around 1,000 from 1925. They introduced staggered subscription packages and cooperated with entertainment broadcasters by making network capacities and content available to them.
In 1926 the editorial team was renamed Deutsche Kursfunk GmbH , and the official name for business broadcasting was business broadcasting .
The Nazis built from 1933 the entire communications Germany around and broke the economy broadcast on 1934. Parts went up in the German news agency DNB.
Literature and Sources
- Ulrich Heitger: From time signals to political means of leadership. Development tendencies and structures of the news programs of the radio in the Weimar Republic 1923-1932 , Lit-Verlag 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6853-2
- Ernst Klöcker: The radio system in Germany and the economic importance of radio , dissertation at the University of Erlangen in 1926
Individual evidence
- ↑ There were also other manufacturers of accessories, such as the later Telefunken subsidiary Signalbau Huth AG with a power supply unit.
- ↑ Bunsenstrasse 2 was the address of the hotel for the Reichstag, previously the hotel for the German officers' association.
- ↑ Quoted from Klöcker, p. 26. At that time, “recording messages” meant listening and taking notes; there was still no technical way of recording what was being said.