Deutsche Welle

**Deutsche Welle** is German radio station owned by ARD. The station broadcasts information, culture, lifestyle for German diaspora programmings.

## History

**Deutsche Welle**'s first shortwave broadcast took place on 3 May 1953 with an address by the then West German President, **Theodor Heuss**. On 11 June 1953, ARD public broadcasters signed an agreement to share responsibility for **Deutsche Welle**. At first, it was controlled by Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk. In 1955, NWDR split into Norddeutscher Rundfunk and Westdeutscher Rundfunk, WDR assumed responsibility for **Deutsche Welle** programming. In 1960, **Deutsche Welle** became an independent public body after a court ruled that broadcasting from Germany was part of the federal government's foreign-affairs function. On 7 June 1962, **Deutsche Welle** joined ARD as a national broadcasting station. **Deutsche Welle** was originally headquartered in the West German city of Cologne. After reunification, when much of the government relocated to Berlin, the station's headquarters moved to Bonn.

With German reunification in 1990, Radio Berlin International, East Germany's international broadcaster ceased to exist. Some of the RBI staff joined **Deutsche Welle** and **Deutsche Welle** inherited some broadcasting facilities, including transmitting facilities at Nauen, as well as RBI's frequencies.

DW-TV began as RIAS-TV, a television station launched by the West Berlin broadcaster RIAS in August 1988. The fall of the Berlin Wall the following year and German reunification in 1990 meant that RIAS-TV was to be closed down. On 1 April 1992, **Deutsche Welle** inherited the RIAS-TV broadcast facilities, using them to start a German and English-language television channel broadcast via satellite, DW-TV, adding a short Spanish broadcast segment the following year. In 1995, it began 24-hour operation (12 hours German, 10 hours English, 2 hours Spanish). At that time, DW-TV introduced a new news studio and a new logo.

**Deutsche Welle** took over some of the former independent radio broadcasting service Deutschlandfunk's foreign-language programming in 1993, when Deutschlandfunk was absorbed into the new Deutschlandradio.

In addition to radio and television programming, **Deutsche Welle** sponsored some published material. For example, the South-Asia Department published **German Heritage: A Series Written for the South Asia Programme** in 1967 and in 1984 published **African Writers on the Air**. Both publications were transcripts of **Deutsche Welle** programming.

In September 1994, **Deutsche Welle** was the first public broadcaster in Germany with an internet presence, initially **www-dw.gmd.de**, hosted by the GMD Information Technology Research Center. For its first two years, the site listed little more than contact addresses, although **Deutsche Welle**'s ***News Journal*** was broadcast in RealAudio from Real's server beginning in 1995, and **Süddeutsche Zeitung**'s initial web presence, which included news articles from the newspaper, shared the site. In 1996, it evolved into a news website using the URL **dwelle.de**; in 2001, the URL changed to **www.dw-world.de**, and was changed again in 2012, to **www.dw.de**. Deutsche Welle purchased the domain **dw.com**, which previously belonged to DiamondWare, in 2013; **Deutsche Welle** had attempted to claim ownership of the address in 2000, without success. **Deutsche Welle** eventually moved to the **www.dw.com** domain on 22 June 2015.

**Deutsche Welle**'s news site is in seven core languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese for Brazil, and Russian), as well as a mixture of news and information in 23 other languages in which **Deutsche Welle** broadcasts. Persian became the site's eighth focus language in 2007.

German and European news is **Deutsche Welle**'s central focus, but the site also offers background information about Germany and German language courses. ***Deutsch, Warum Nicht?*** (literally: ***German, Why Not?***) is a personal course for learning the German language, created by **Deutsche Welle** and the **Goethe-Institut**.

In 2001, **Deutsche Welle** (in conjunction with ARD and ZDF) founded the German TV subscription TV channel for North American viewers. The project was shut down after four years owing to low subscriber numbers. It has since been replaced by the DW-TV channel (also a subscription service).

Unlike most other international broadcasters, DW-TV does not charge terrestrial stations for use of its programming, and as a result, *Journal* and other programmes are rebroadcast on numerous public broadcasting stations in several countries, including the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. In the Philippines, it is shown nationwide on Net 25 (some programs are still broadcast on Net 25 like Global 3000 and Drive it!; Net 25 aired Journal until 21 June 2015 because Journal was changed to **DW News** on the following day)

**Deutsche Welle** is still suffering from financial and staffing cuts. Its budget was reduced by about €75 million over five years, and of the 2,200 employees it had in 1994, only 1,200 remain. Further cuts are still expected.

In 2003, the German government passed a new **Deutsche Welle Act**, which defined **Deutsche Welle** as a tri-media organization, making the **Deutsche Welle** website an equal partner with DW-TV and **DW Radio**. The website is available in 30 languages, but focuses on German, English, Spanish, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, and Arabic. Persian became the eighth focus language in 2007.

In March 2009, DW-TV expanded its television services in Asia with two new channels, namely DW-TV Asia and DW-TV Asia+. DW-TV Asia (DW-TV Asien in German) contains 16 hours of German programming and 8 hours in English, whilst DW-TV Asia+ contains 18 hours of English programmes plus 6 hours of German programmes.

In August 2009, DW-TV's carriage in the United Kingdom on **Sky** channel 794 ceased, although the channel continues to be available via other European satellites receivable in the UK.

In 2011, **Deutsche Welle** announced a major reduction of service including the closure of most of its FM services in the Balkans (except for Romani), but that it would expand its network of FM partners in Africa. The radio production for Hausa, Kiswahili, French, and Portuguese for Africa were optimized for FM broadcasts and **Deutsche Welle** also produces a regional radio magazine daily in English, to be rebroadcast by partners in Africa.

Audio content in Arabic is distributed online, via mobile, or rebroadcast by partners.

**Deutsche Welle** announced it would focus on FM partnerships for Bengali, Urdu, Dari/Pashtu, and Indonesian for South Asia, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

On 1 November 2011, **Deutsche Welle** discontinued shortwave broadcasts in German, Russian, Persian, and Indonesian and ended its English service outside Africa. Chinese programming was reduced from 120 minutes to 60 minutes a week. As of November 2011, **Deutsche Welle** only broadcast radio programming via shortwave in: Amharic, Chinese, Dari, English and French for Africa, Hausa, Kiswahili, Pashtu, Portuguese for Africa and Urdu.

The budget of the **Deutsche Welle** for 2016 was 301.8 million euros.

On 25 February 2018, DW-TV published **The Climate Cover Up - Big Oil's Campaign of Deception** (2018) after documents confirmed big oil companies have known the burning of fossil fuels impacts climate since 1957.

On 22 June 2015, DW-TV launched a 24-hour English-language news channel with a new design and a new studio as part of a rebrand to **DW News**. Previously, **Deutsche Welle**'s news programmes were called **Journal** and broadcast in English in 3, 15 and 30-minute blocks. The new channel offers 30-minute updates every hour and 60-minute programmes twice a day on weekdays. **DW News** broadcasts from Berlin but frequently has live social media segments hosted from a specially-designed studio in Bonn. The German, Spanish and Arabic channels also received a new design.

At the same time, **Deutsche Welle**'s news website moved from a .de URL to .com and added a social media stream to its front page. The refreshed **Deutsche Welle** services were launched under the tagline **Made for Minds**.

## Logos

First logo (1953-1992)Second logo (1992-1995)Third logo (1995-2012)Fourth logo (2012-present)