The ZDF reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

ZDF

Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) is a public service German language television station based in Mainz. It is run as an independent nonprofit corporation under the authority of the Länder.

The station began broadcasting on April 1, 1963 in Eschborn. In 1967 the first program was shown in color. The ZDF moved to Mainz-Lerchenberg in 1974, after briefly being located in Wiesbaden.

In its first decades, the ZDF exclusively broadcast via terrestrial antenna inside Germany. This is, unlike the stations of the ARD, run by T-Systems (daughter of Deutsche Telekom), and was formerly run by the German postal service. Like the ARD, the ZDF positioned many transmitters so that the channel could be received in vast parts of the GDR, where it had many viewers.

Since the first cable pilot projects, the ZDF is also fed into the cable television system. The first Europe-wide satellite broadcast via Astra 1C began in August 1993 during the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA - "International Broadcasting Exposition") in Berlin. In the same decade, these new technologies were used to start digital broadcasting of ZDF.

Since 2002, ZDF can be received digitally via DVB-T around Berlin. In order to favor this means of transmission, the analog transmission of the channel via antenna was discontinued in the capital in August 2003.

ZDF also operates the channels 3sat, Phoenix, arte and KiKa in cooperation with other networks. Included in its digital offering ZDFvision are the channels ZDF.infokanal, ZDF.dokukanal and ZDF.theaterkanal..

The animated ZDF mascots, the Mainzelmännchen, created by Wolf Gerlach in 1963, became very popular and are still shown in between commercials.

Today the ZDF is the largest television network in Europe.

The ZDF is headed by a Director-General, who is elected by the ZDF Television Council. Since the founding of the station in 1963, the following people held this office:

• 1963 - 1977: Prof. Karl Holzamer
• 1977 - 1982: Karl-Günter von Hase
• 1982 - 2002: Prof. Dr. h.c. Dieter Stolte
• since 2002: Markus Schächter

Shows

• Wetten, dass

External Links

• Official ZDF Homepage (German)
• English language information

See also: List of German language television channels

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