Deutsche WelleorDW is the international broadcasterofGermany, utilising shortwave and satellite for radio and television broadcasts. It is also a participant in Digital Radio Mondiale. Deutsche Welle in English roughly means "German Wave".
Deutsche Welle has broadcast regularly since May 3, 1953. Until 2003 it was hosted in Cologne, but in honour of its 50th birthday, it was relocated to a building in Bonn's old government city, where the radio broadcasts are produced. The television broadcasts are produced in Berlin.
A first broadcasting society called Deutsche Welle GmbH was founded in August, 1924, seated in Berlin. It was a common corporation of all the regional broadcasters.
But the new Deutsche Welle established in 1953 is a completely different institution. The history of this new Deutsche Welle began on May 3, 1953, with a first shortwave broadcasting in German language. It was addressed at Germans all over the world an spoken by the then-President of Germany, Theodor Heuss. On June 11, 1953, the public broadcasters in the ARD signed a treaty to establish the common short wave radio programme "Deutsche Welle". It was first lead by the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR), later by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR).
In1954, the Deutsche Welle started to broadcast programmes in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese languages.
In1960 the "Deutsche Welle" became an independent public body, which joined on June 7, 1962 as a national broadcasting station the ARD. Also in 1962 the programme was extended to other languages: Persian, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Serbian and Croatian. In 1963 these languages were joined by programmes in Swahili and Hausa, Indonesian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Slovenian. In 1964 and 1970 the linguistic plurality was extended another times, to Greek, Italian, Hindi and Urdu, and to Pashtu and Dari, respective.
From 1963 onwards the Deutsche Welle sends copies of movies to television stations.
With the re-unification of the two German states in 1990, the Radio Berlin International (RBI) of the GDR ceased to exist. Some of the staff and personnel of RBI joined the Deutsche Welle as well as some broadcasting apparatusses and frequencies.
OnApril 1, 1992, Deutsche Welle started a German and English language television programme (DW TV). The programme is broadcasted via satellite, and was extended to Spanish and Albanian. The former RIAS-TV programme was included into DW TV.
With the restructuring of the public broadcasting structure on the national level in 1994, which consisted mainly in the inclusion of the former independent radio broadcasting service Deutschlandfunk into the DeutschlandRadio, the Deutsche Welle in 1993 took over some of the foreign language programmes of Deutschlandfunk.
In1994, Deutsche Welle was the first public broadcaster in Germany with an own World Wide Web presence (www.dwelle.de). It now has a 30 language website www.dw-world.de.
Another extension in languages came in 2000 with an Ukrainian language programme.
In2001 Deutsche Welle started the German TV programme for North America, viewable via pay TV. Several DW programs are widely syndicated on public-broadcasting stations in the US, and WNVC (aka the MHz Network) in Northern Virginia/DC and KMTP in San Francisco also devote a significant portion of their broadcasting week to carriage of DW programming, as does the Pennsylvania Cable Network.
