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Communist-Era Television |
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#126 |
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Quote:
This is a film from Cuba about a runaway train, the driver left it temporarily to have his lunch where the action begins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bVQvpUdbEQ
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#127 |
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With a little help from Google:
Any resemblance to reality ... is reality itself. Based on the facts, the machinist's breakfast cost the Cuban economy close to a million pesos. It was the most expensive tomato bread in the world. |
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#128 |
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Has anyone heard of Dean Reed?
Born in Colorado, he became a rock'n'roll star in Latin America in the 60s. He converted to socialism, toured in Eastern Europe, moved to live in the GDR, and was married there twice. As a leftist American, Reed quickly became a poster boy of the GDR state propaganda. He starred in various movies and sang socialist battle songs, e.g. "We'll say yes" which was the anthem of the 1973 World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin: http://www.videoclip.bg/watch/62220 In the 80s, his fame dwindled. He had relationship problems with his wife Renate Blume, a well-known East German actress. He thought about returning to the US and running for the senate as a socialist candidate. ![]() In 1986, Dean Reed committed suicide in a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. This is a very interesting documentary about his life, subtitled in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81PlAQ1Sr38 |
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#129 |
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Quote:
With a little help from Google:
Any resemblance to reality ... is reality itself. Based on the facts, the machinist's breakfast cost the Cuban economy close to a million pesos. It was the most expensive tomato bread in the world. |
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#130 |
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Question for KarlHyde, if he is still reading. Were East and West German television compatible, or did you need a dual standard set? Was watching East German telly in the west considered unpatriotic, or was it just normal?
How many channels did each 'side' have? |
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#131 |
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West Germany used PAL colour, East Germany SECAM. Dual decoder TVs were in the western shops near the border (Mit DDR Farbe). Otherwise they both used system B/G. This was unlike most communist countries that used system D. Where I stayed the west had three channels, the east two. Cable systems had extra western channels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Fernsehfunk |
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#132 |
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Quote:
Question for KarlHyde, if he is still reading. Were East and West German television compatible, or did you need a dual standard set?
Quote:
Was watching East German telly in the west considered unpatriotic, or was it just normal? I grew up in rural northwestern Germany, about 120 km from the border. In the 80s, we had three Western terrestrial channels: ARD and ZDF (the main public stations), and a regional one. In big cities like Hamburg or Hannover, commercial stations RTL and SAT.1 became available in the late 80s.How many channels did each 'side' have? In the East, there was DDR 1 and DDR 2. Both channels were broadcast from high-power transmitters along the border, but DDR 1 (being on VHF) had a much larger footprint than DDR 2. We could watch DDR 1 in acceptable quality (although the picture was somewhat grainy), while DDR 2 was unwatchable. When you only had three "domestic" channels, a fourth one from across the border (in the same language) was a welcome alternative. Of course the news and political programmes were frowned upon. But there were decent variety shows and children's programmes (e.g. the little mole from Czechoslovakia), loads of sports coverage, and some movies from the west as well. For example, I watched "Once Upon a Time in America" on DDR 1, and I even taped it. This was the long version, about 3.5 hours, complete with the West German dubbing soundtrack. I also had a soft spot for the consumer counselling programmes that were always on at 7pm, because they seemed so "exotic". There was a traffic magazine, a gardening magazine, programmes about medicine, about legal cases, about various hobbies, etc. To put a long story short: About 30 or 40% of the Western population could receive at least one of the Eastern channels, and most of them probably watched them once in a while. About 90% of the Eastern population could receive the Western channels, and the vast majority watched them extensively, although the government wasn't happy about it, and people didn't talk about it in public. |
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#133 |
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Thanks Karl, some really interesting stuff here. All the more interesting because I can just about remember the cold war and can clearly remember the fall of the wall. Thanks for all the links.
I thought broadcasting had changed a lot in my 40 years on this earth, but to someone in East Germany the change must be stratospheric. |
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#134 |
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Just wondering, could people living in areas of Albania near to the Greek border get the Greek channels and vice versa?
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#135 |
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Just wondering, could people living in areas of Albania near to the Greek border get the Greek channels and vice versa?
From what I have read about Enver Hoxha, watching Greek TV in Albania would have been inadvisable. |
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#136 |
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Quote:
I thought broadcasting had changed a lot in my 40 years on this earth, but to someone in East Germany the change must be stratospheric.
People who lived closer to the inner-German border could listen to western music, watch "Dallas" or "Miami Vice", so maybe they didn't feel quite as underprivileged as the people in Dresden. And in Berlin, you could receive up to 11 terrestrial TV channels in the late 80s. From the west: ARD ZDF N3 RTLplus SAT.1 AFN TV (in NTSC) BFBS TV (in CCIR I) a French channel (in SECAM) From the east: DDR 1 DDR 2 a Russian channel |
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#137 |
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I love this thread. I wish DocumentaryFan was still around
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#138 |
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Looking at a map, there doesn't seem to be many large Albanian towns near the border. However Sarande is onlyabout 10 miles from Corfu, so you would almost certainly have been able to pick Greek TV up there, and maybe even with a indoor aerial so you didn't reveal to the authorities what you were up to!!
It might also have been possible to pick up RAI in some places in Albania- at the narrowest point the adridatic is only 50 miles across. |
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#139 |
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Yes, especially for those who were living in regions where they couldn't receive western TV & radio.
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#140 |
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Surely there can;t have been too many places where it was impossible to receive West German radio- given how strongly the stations came into the UK at night. On medium wave there seemed to be more German stations than anything else sometimes!
My mother had a schoolmate who was living in Magdeburg, about 50 km east of the border. We visited the family a couple of times. The lady's daughters were constantly listening to NDR 2, and they taped all sorts of West German, British, and American music. Blank tapes were very expensive in the GDR, so we took some BASF tapes with us (although I think it was officially prohibited to bring them across the border). |
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#141 |
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I love this thread. I wish DocumentaryFan was still around
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#142 |
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From what I remember of Radio Tirana I doubt any Greek would want to watch Albanian TV.
From what I have read about Enver Hoxha, watching Greek TV in Albania would have been inadvisable. |
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#143 |
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I love this thread. I wish DocumentaryFan was still around
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He's still an active Digitalspy member. I guess he'll find us sooner or later.
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#144 |
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Hey, welcome back to your very own thread! ![]() Let's go back to page 1: Quote:
Speaking of East Germany, one of its most famous TV productions was Der Schwarze Kanal ("The Black Channel"), a longtime propaganda program hosted by Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler. In each edition, Von Schnitzler would show news clips from ARD and ZDF, the West German public TV networks, and try to convince his viewers that Western television was full of lies and aggressive propaganda. HERE is the creepy 1980s opener of the program -- note the ominous music and the symbolism of the West German eagle representing ARD and ZDF (and looking pretty fascistic!) landing on an East German TV antenna.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmUeRXEx_u4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpnE_SUg6Gw It says in the description that the programme was taped 400 km away from the Brocken transmitter in the Harz mountains. The Harz was divided between East & West Germany, and both sides built high-power transmitters on the mountains. There's only an 8 km distance between the transmitters on Brocken (east) and Torfhaus (west). Both are still active: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendean...uf_dem_Brocken http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Torfhaus By the way, Der schwarze Kanal was always shown on Monday nights around 9.30pm on DDR 1. At 8pm, there was always an old German entertainment film, usually from the 30s or 40s (note the irony: straight out of Goebbels' film factory). These movies were very popular, and the government hoped that viewers would sit through the propaganda programme as well. There was a joke about a measuring unit called "Schni". One Schni was the period of time that it took an average viewer to switch off the telly when the continuity announcer said Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler's name right after the end of the movie.
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#145 |
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Yes, especially for those who were living in regions where they couldn't receive western TV & radio. In the area around Dresden (nicknamed "valley of the clueless") the number of people who were trying to leave the GDR, legally or illegally, was higher than in the rest of the country.
People who lived closer to the inner-German border could listen to western music, watch "Dallas" or "Miami Vice", so maybe they didn't feel quite as underprivileged as the people in Dresden. In fact, before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the GDR authorities even allowed cable systems to be built in the Dresden area, and the West German channels were included among their offerings. Here's a late 1980s report on this phenomenon from ARD [in German]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbIocNFHnTM Quote:
And in Berlin, you could receive up to 11 terrestrial TV channels in the late 80s.
From the west: [...] AFN TV (in NTSC) BFBS TV (in CCIR I) a French channel (in SECAM) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBnZ3ZBWEAADmKq.jpg Source: Claus Grimm / Twitter |
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#146 |
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Here's a map showing the coverage areas for these three channels in West Berlin:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBnZ3ZBWEAADmKq.jpg Source: Claus Grimm / Twitter ![]() However, AFN & BFBS radio were widely available in Greater Berlin on FM. |
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#147 |
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A great thread this and deserves a revive. Thanks to Karl and DocumentaryFan for all their work. Now I thought it was in this thread that there was a few links to the evening news programmes on the various old Yugoslav regions ( Slovenia, Croatia etc ) but i cannot find it.
I found the post! The clips are from 1989 (Except for the Belgrade clip, which is actually from 1990, they were originally recorded by me and uploaded to YouTube by a Croatian TV archivist): TV Novi Sad; Autonomous Region of Vojvodina within the Socialist Republic of Serbia Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBrM-xUFibg Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyB5fFRfKTQ Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWYaCdkU-xA Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1eMUDFuPdA TV Zagreb; Socialist Republic of Croatia Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6HibnNvx8U Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lsg94vwHms Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pAmMM2wfXU TV Titograd; Socialist Republic of Montenegro Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UJP-CXGKnA Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbA2vCIc7w Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivJozKjeW2Y TV Ljubljana; Socialist Republic of Slovenia http://vimeo.com/12463053 TV Beograd (Belgrade); Socialist Republic of Serbia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsejOtxTTmA TV Skopje; Socialist Republic of Macedonia Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym6rYHo3rvw Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o_dRVDdZv4 Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdqQczwluLg TV Novi Sad again, but this time in Hungarian: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TtDjnicVpg Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsIeF2R1kEo Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSQa3Q38rkg Quote:
I remember being in Zagreb in the 1990s and watching 'Allo 'Allo on Croatian TV - in English with sub-titles in what I assume was Croatian.
In the countries of the former Yugoslavia, only children's programming is dubbed. Everything else is subtitled. |
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#148 |
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Anybody got any ideas please ?
TV Novi Sad; Autonomous Region of Vojvodina within the Socialist Republic of Serbia Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBrM-xUFibg Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyB5fFRfKTQ Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWYaCdkU-xA Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1eMUDFuPdA TV Zagreb; Socialist Republic of Croatia Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6HibnNvx8U Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lsg94vwHms Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pAmMM2wfXU TV Titograd; Socialist Republic of Montenegro Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UJP-CXGKnA Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbA2vCIc7w Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivJozKjeW2Y TV Ljubljana; Socialist Republic of Slovenia http://vimeo.com/12463053 TV Beograd (Belgrade); Socialist Republic of Serbia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsejOtxTTmA TV Skopje; Socialist Republic of Macedonia Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym6rYHo3rvw Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o_dRVDdZv4 Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdqQczwluLg TV Novi Sad again, but this time in Hungarian: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TtDjnicVpg Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsIeF2R1kEo Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSQa3Q38rkg 'Allo 'Allo was hugely popular in the former Yugoslavia both before and after the country's breakup -- probably more than any other British sitcom with the exception of Only Fools and Horses. In fact, 'Allo, 'Allo is still occasionally re-run in Slovenia. (I'm not sure about Croatia.) In the countries of the former Yugoslavia, only children's programming is dubbed. Everything else is subtitled.[/quote] geektastic |
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#149 |
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I've stumbled across another very interesting clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryfxXPPSdOA It's the late edition of Aktuelle Kamera, East Germany's newscast, from 12th January 1990. This was in the phase of transition, after the fall of the wall, but before the democratic elections on 18th March. There was a flurry of political activity and rapid changes. Protesters on the streets were now chanting "We are one people", rather than "We are the people", i.e. the public opinion was shifting towards German unification. On that day, news anchor Angelika Unterlauf (who had been doing this job since 1977) greeted the viewers at the beginning of the programme: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Tagesthemen... err... to the late edition of Aktuelle Kamera." BANG! What a slip of the tongue! ![]() Tagesthemen (literally: The Day's Topics) is the late news magazine of West German station ARD. Back then, it always started at 10.30pm. Aktuelle Kamera started at 10.40 that night, so I guess Mrs. Unterlauf had been watching the beginning of Tagesthemen in the studio. Three or four months earlier, she would have been fired instantly for that slip of the tongue. Mrs. Unterlauf found a very charming way to end the programme. She said: "Well, ladies and gentlemen, these were the topics of the day in the late edition of Aktuelle Kamera." ![]() Another anecdote: In 1985, a radio journalist from West Berlin wrote and sang a (satirical) love song that was dedicated to Angelika Unterlauf. The song was played on several western radio stations, and allegedly, the GDR State Security Service suspected Mrs. Unterlauf of having a love affair with the singer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_vZmeiKBLQ http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie |
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#150 |
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Gotta love the theme tune to the Slovenian show
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What a slip of the tongue!