Overseas TV History

TV History
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I’m afraid not, I’m really sorry.

A bit of an obscure piece of American TV history: during the analog cable era, there was a channel called Prevue, a popular barker TV channel which was almost universally available on their lineups. The channel was created by the United Video Satellite Group, which was the distributor of the superstation feed of Chicago’s WGN (later evolving as a conventional cable network, WGN America, and now known as NewsNation), and was formed as a side project to allow UVSG to use the spare capacity on their Satcom transponder. Initially known as the EPG Channel, it initially offered a full-screen scrolling program listings grid (which would become the centerpiece of the channel for most of its history); cable operators were also allowed to vary the features of its channel, including adding scrolling text advertisements and a ticker. Initially functioning on Atari machines, it soon switched to Amiga-based machines, including the launch of EPG Sr., which added a split-screen function to its software by the late 80s, initially displaying more detailed ads.

The success of the EPG led to UVSG to form a special unit, Trakker, which would be renamed Prevue Networks Inc. by 1988. That same year, the EPG Sr. was upgraded to an Amiga 2000-based machine, receiving the ability to display video promos of TV programs in the top half of the screen, with accompanying sound and the ability to display schedule information in the opposite side of the screen, as well as adding color-coded spaces for sport and film programming and weather forecast information inside the grid. Alongside this development, the EPG Channel gained more of its own identity, being renamed Prevue Guide and adding short interstitial programming related to the TV industry and to the channel’s schedules.

During 1993, the channel received a two-phased facelift: by March, the grid had been relaunched and reorganised; the log list design of the grid was replaced by a table-based design, and received a new navy blue color palette and a custom font; this is the channel’s best remembered grid design. By Christmas, the channel was renamed Prevue Guide and received new interstitial music and designs.

With the advent of cable television in other countries and the imminent arrival of digital cable, Prevue greatly expanded, providing the first operators (including TCI) a special IPG interface using Prevue’s programming and scheduling data; additionally, it launched a special feed for Latin American cable operators, featuring mostly programming previews. This feed transitioned to a new Windows NT machine by 1997, due to the massive technical problems of the Amiga 2000-based machines, which tended to crash frequently; this version lacked scrolling abilities, but would serve as a pilot for a new eventual scrolling grid, which would debut after things began changing.

In February 1998, Prevue remodeled its look to reflect the company’s increased focus on launching content designed for new media. The new look, designed by Pittard Sullivan, reflected a new, youthful and cyberpunk-style era for the channel, including the launch of a strict hour wheel format. Then, in June, UVSG bought TV Guide from News Corp, resulting on the group selling its non-Prevue assets by the end of the year. On February 1, 1999, the Prevue channel was renamed TV Guide Channel, and relaunched its hour wheel schedule to include more pop culture and industry-related news content and features; later in the year, the channel received new Windows NT-based grids, codenamed Hollywood, with a striking yellow design and improved features, plus the ability for off-air routine maintenance. By the end of the year, Gemstar, a Chinese-American company which had plagiarised many of Prevue’s patents, forcibly took over UVSG and TV Guide. This led to the settlement of legal lawsuits related to the plagiarism accusations, and Gemstar absorbed Prevue/TV Guide’s own VCR and interactive hardware patents into its own.

With the increasing availability of digital cable and the Internet, Prevue/TV Guide Channel’s original purpose began to be less important. As a result, the channel began airing more full-length content related to industry and pop culture (similar to E!'s programming at the time) and the grid began to occupy less space on air to allow for programming. This led to some major cable operators ending its relationship with TV Guide and establishing its own scrolling guide channels. By 2007, the channel’s schedule was fully made of entertainment-related shows and paid programming, and was duly renamed TV Guide Network. However, it began adding more off-network repeats to its programming over time. The grid designs also began to be altered, with a blue grid appearing in 2003, a navy one in 2004, and a definitive silver grid by 2005; this was also adopted by the Latin American operations after dropping the first generation Windows NT software and adopting the Hollywood hardware, which remained airing programming previews.

Gestar was acquired by Macrovision in 2008 and was renamed Rovi; given the new company wanted to focus on the software side of the business, they sold the TV Guide brands (including the network) to One Equity Partners (the magazine was separately sold to OpenGate Capital, with a licensing agreement to use the brand). One Equity Partners would resell the channel to Lionsgate Television by the end of 2009; this move and the economical crisis would result on the channel suspending most original shows and the increased presence of off-network repeats. The channel also began to gradually drop the grid element of the channel due to the omnipresence of similar services on digital cable and online; those who retained the grid were mostly minor cable companies, and received an update which shrinked even more the size of the grid to allow for an anamorphic widescreen presentation of the channel’s content. By 2011, 75% of cable systems had already dropped the grid.

However, that same year, Lionsgate cancelled the rest of the channel’s originals, focusing entirely on off-network repeats; additionally, it turned less attention to the channel after having recently taken over Summit Entertainment. By 2012, Lionsgate announced plans to sell a stake of the channel, which it did after CBS Corporation (then independent) bought a 50% stake. The channel was renamed TVGN in 2013, re-adding original content, mostly produced by CBS-owned Entertainment Tonight, along with repeats of CBS entertainment and reality shows and specials. This was a temporary measure, however, as CBS and Lionsgate renamed the channel to its current brand, Pop, at the start of 2015.

Although the final carriage agreements which specified the requirement of the scrolling grid expired in 2014, some smaller cable operators still carried this element up until 2016. Currently, Pop is wholly owned by CBS Corporation successor Paramount, as CBS had bought Lionsgate’s stake shortly before the re-merger with Viacom.

In some smaller cable operators in Latin America, a Software Only version of the Hollywood grid software remained in use up until 2016 too:

And now, here’s a quick montage of some of Prevue/TV Guide’s idents and openers used during its history:

Excuses for the very long post, but I don’t think this has been covered in the forum. Before I leave, here’s a trailer for a documentary by a YouTube user and Prevue enthusiast, D.J.R. Saunders, which is making a documentary on the history of this particular kind of channel; it is set to premiere later this year on his own user channel:

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Speaking of TV station fires, a blaze in 1979 caused severe damage to WTVD in Durham, North Carolina, but the station was able to air this newscast the following day (albeit from a conference room rather than its news set); the fire is, of course, the lead story:

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A 1981 NBC Magazine report about local TV news anchors in the U.S. and their tendency to move from market to market:

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Here’s a 1995 post-apartheid newscast from South Africa’s CCV-TV. Launched in 1992, CCV-TV (Contemporary Community Values TV) was the SABC’s first multiracial channel, in sharp contrast to the strictly race-based channels that had broadcast before then. It ceased to exist in 1996 when the SABC was completely reorganized:

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20 years ago, Hongkongers were shocked to find singer Leslie Cheung committing suicide, on April Fools of all days. These were the local Cantonese news reports afterwards. CW: Contains site of the suicide.

TVB: Leading the headlines that night also included the evacuation of residents to a quarantine camp, as where they lived was suspected to be the point of SARS mass spread.

ATV: Important to note that Cheung started his stardom on an ATV (then RTV) talent show back in the 70s.

i-Cable News: Ticker showing a government clarification of an online rumour, which claimed Hong Kong as an infected area. As that was clarified, many dismissed the singer’s death as a terrible joke. Alas…

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This five-minute 11 a.m. ZDF newscast is from today, so why am posting in here, in the TV History thread? Well, to celebrate its 60th anniversary, the German broadcaster decided to produce it as it would have looked in 1963:

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I wish one of our networks had done this for an anniversary. Very cool!

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A historical compilation of news opens used by the German news-and-information channel N24, now known as WELT, since its 2000 launch:

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I know this is a long shot for me, but does anyone remember MTV’s alternative music show called 120 Minutes (also the name of a MTV2 Europe show)?

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In-depth Welt now… this is actually the culmination of a long history which dates back to ProSieben’s and Sat.1’s early days. They had attempted to compete with the big names (ARD, ZDF, RTL) after seeing the successful news-offensive made by then-RTLplus in 1992 after Peter Kloeppel took over as anchorman and managing editor. They attempted many times to go all-in in trying to emulate their success, however, Sat.1’s main evening news has always been a distant fourth behind Tagesschau, RTL Aktuell and ZDF heute; ProSieben’s newscasts have had always fluctuated in the ratings, but now it is just considered as “that news program before The Simpsons come on” (no pun intended).

Each channel has taken its own way historically: in the case of ProSieben, after a first attempt under former DFF anchor Jan Fromm, when it was named Tagesbild (only to be dropped after the ARD complained about the moniker being too similar to the Tagesschau) and expanded their broadcasts from short updates to a daily full-fledged evening programme, they snapped up Wolfgang Klein, one of the former presenters of the ARD’s Weltspiegel (an international affairs magazine produced by the WDR), and, by 1996, Klein had relaunched the newscast and a brand new American-style graphics package by Pittard Sullivan (the now-defunct agency behind all of ProSieben’s graphics since 1994) and a carbon-copy of WSVN’s Newsplex was installed. Klein was the anchorman of the main 19:30 edition, rotating with Christiane Gerboth-Jörges (who would remain anchor until her retirement in 2011). The style and content was stabilized thereafter, even if Klein resigned to return to public TV and replaced by both Florian Fischer-Fabian and Michael Marx, and even after the ProSieben-Sat.1 merger.

At Sat.1, they also began their news department with short updates, initially produced by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, later in-house (Sat.1 Blick). By 1991, the broadcaster wanted to expand their news department by aping the Tagesschau instead of going American, by hiring Dieter Kronzucker and Brigitte Weirich to front a new evening news block, Guten Abend Deutschland, which mixed hard news with analysis and opinion. It was not a success, causing the broadcaster to continue tinkering with news formats for a while; however, its regional newscasts began to be competitive with the local broadcasters. By 1994, as the broadcaster became a Berlin-licensed channel, it took the opportunity to reposition its newscasts. The evening newscast moved to 18:30 with new newscasters: Hans-Hermann Gockel (formerly anchor of the Sat.1 Frühstücksfernsehen, now media spokesperson for the far-right AfD party), Ulrich Meyer (by then anchoring the Akte tabloid service newsmagazine), Clarissa Ahlers (later finding success at n-tv) and Astrid Frohloff (anchorwoman since 1999, now working at RBB). In 1999, a watershed moment happened as SAT.1 moved to a state-of-the-art newsroom at the Berlin city centre. By 2004, another relaunch: Thomas Kausch (later main anchor of NDR Info’s late edition from Hannover, now working at Bild TV) replaced Frohloff as anchorman, under the support of TeleZüri and Tele24 founder Roger Schawinski (by then SAT.1 director) and the newscasts were renamed SAT.1 News; it additionally launched newsmagazines at other times to compete with RTL’s tabloid magazines to mixed success. By 2008, a last ditch measure coinciding with a short-lived rebrand: Peter Limbourg was named anchorman and managing editor, and the broadcaster boasted its political experience upon its promotion: although ratings were still low, they stabilized until Marc Bator was poached from Tagesschau, a result of Limbourg’s promotion to Director General of Deutsche Welle.

During and after the ProSieben-Sat.1 merger, both broadcasters began planning the founding stages of N24, which launched on January 24, 2000. The channel wanted to differentiate itself from n-tv with a shorter and snappier newscast schedule and frequent breaking news and finance updates, as well as the use of then-new technology, including virtual sets and graphics powered by Vizrt. They were also the launch clients of earthTV, and had a pioneering partnership with Bloomberg and later with CNBC Europe. However, the crisis came and P7S1 was forced to sell N24 to independent investors in 2009 (well before Axel Springer came) in exchange for the outsourcing of news production, additionally, the group centralized all operations at its HQ in Munich (on the Unterföhring suburb); it also began increasing the number of documentaries and non-news programming on prime time and undid many of the pioneering partnerships to cut costs.

The outsourcing agreement with ProSiebenSat.1 was renewed shortly after the Axel Springer takeover of N24; the channel was renamed Welt in early 2017, due to Axel Springer wanting to create a Multiplatform media hub starting from the resources of its hard newspaper Die Welt. On April 24, 2021, Welt left its Potsdamer Platz leased building in downtown Berlin to move to the new Axel Springer building by Rem Koolhaas; this was further enhanced that December with the launch of a new day part-based news schedule and new openers. Over in the FTA channels, they did get horrid new virtual sets:

The outsourcing agreement expired at the end of last year, and ProSiebenSat.1 declined to renew it, instead relaunching an in-house news operation, including building new facilities in their newly-built headquarters in the Unterföhring suburb of Munich, part of a larger campus project for the broadcaster. The news operations are being overseen by a newly-created division of their in-house production company, Seven.One Entertainment Group, under the direction of Sven Pietsch, also responsible for factual programming. A Welt veteran editor, Arne Teetz, is serving as managing editor, whilst Charlotte Potts, formerly anchor of the ZDF Morgenmagazin, is the political editor, based in Berlin. As part of the massive relaunch of the news department, P7S1 hired a number of key news presenters and reporters from mainly public service broadcasters ARD and ZDF, including Karolin Kandler and Linda Zervakis; additionally, existing presenters and reporters were reassigned to new shifts and editorial positions.

Although the operations are back in-house, they are no graphical changes to be seen as of right now. The horrid virtual set designs are being retained, as is each channels’ news designs; however, this is a temporary measure. P7S1 plans to gradually introduce from late spring a common, unified news brand, where newscasts in all three channels and a new digital offering will sit. Additionally, a real set design is being built for the common brand, set to launch this summer.

Welt decided to eventually find a new partner in Red Bull-owned ServusTV, whose German operation is starting to separate from its Austrian counterpart. The Vienna-based access prime slot was replaced with new shows targeted at the local audience, including Germany-specific newscasts at 6pm and 7:20pm (aping the slots of its Austrian newscasts) and a lighter style magazine produced by subsidiary Maz & More, Guten Abend Deutschland. The studio where P7S1’s newscasts aired was refurbished with a new hard set from their to-go set designers Veech x Veech.

In the other hand, the Austrian versions of ProSieben and Sat.1 have recently not aired the German editions of newscasts due to new laws forcing locally licensed channels to produce its own Austrian-oriented newscasts. Profiting from this, ProSieben launched a local newscast, then named ProSieben Austria TopNews. They also launched their morning show, Café Puls, in 2005, a three way simulcast with the local SAT.1 and kabel eins versions. Unable to compete with the ZIB 2 over at the ORF, the evening newscast was relaunched in 2006 and counterprogrammed at 18:00, now under the AustriaNews name. This increased ratings and prompted the German counterpart to move Newstime at such time unsuccesfully. When P7S1 bought Puls TV in 2007, it was relaunched as Puls 4 the following year, taking on a similar content policy to ProSieben, but with a strong local flavor. Initially with short newscasts as Puls 4 News, they were quickly integrated within the ProSieben AustriaNews fold and they launched an additional newscast for SAT.1, as the channel had gained a license within the country and therefore was forced to air a local newscast.

After Corinna Milborn (a political scientist and journalist) was hired in 2012 to host a political talk show, Pro/Contra, P7S1 quickly embraced her experience as an up and coming journalist, hiring her full-time as news director some months later. Milborn relaunched and boosted the news department under the Puls 4 News name and a set of new programmes, including the ultimately unsuccesful Guten Abend Österreich, which mixed news, talk and lifestyle under the 90 minute show; after a botched format change and the addition of a News-Quiz, the show was canceled by 2014, replaced by a conventional Puls 4 News broadcast at 19:30, which has ultimately established as a modest competitor to the ORF. After P7S1 bought commercial rival ATV from Leonine, their newsroom was integrated with that of Puls 4 News, however, on competition grounds, their newscast remains separate from that of Puls 4. After the merger, the broadcaster decided to launch the Puls 24 channel in response to the CNN-backed OE24.TV, to great success; the Puls 4 newscasts were renamed after the newly-launched FTV channel (it was initially free-to-air, however, after some months, it was encrypted in a free-to-view basis, like most Austrian TV channels). Since 2022, the ATV Aktuell and Puls 24 News were finally unified into a single Puls 24 Aktuell brand, although the Puls 4/24 and ATV editions continue to be produced separately.

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Another day, another great post from @Medianext.MX. Thank you for giving us such detail whenever you post.

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The approach of Hurricane Andrew in the stop story of this 1992 edition of CNN’s PrimeNews:

And here’s a similar compilation covering the 1980s:

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Here’s another bulletin reenactment: this time from South America. In 1981, as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations of Argentine TV, the 4 major Buenos Aires channels produced a special program to look back at their respective news departments. LS84 Canal 11 decided to recreate the very first bulletin of El Reporter Esso (originally aired on Monday 11 March 1963; the proper film footage from that date was used). Armando Repetto appears as the newsreader. He served in that capacity during the 6 years the Reporter was on the air (1963-69) and remained at Canal 11 as newscaster until 1990, when the station was privatized and became Telefe.

By the way, this is how the Reporter’s set looked in the 1960s:

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TVE’s Telediario gets interrupted by industrial action in December 1988. At the 6:09 minute mark, the video shows the exact moment when the Navacerrada transmitter is shut down by technicians. At the time of the strike, TVE was the only national network in Spain.

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It was certainly a half-reasonable attempt, although modern television and the virtual set made it look a little too slick (and obviously they had to make do for the weather).

The story about egg prices was a nice attention to detail - included because the first edition of heute in 1963 had an “egg prices stable” story; a price stability that definitely hasn’t been the case in many parts of the world (not least the EU) in 2022-23 :grimacing:

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This moment was quite unexpected at the time: that industrial action, which occurred on December 14 that year, was triggered by a significant labor reform by then-Government head Felipe González, including controversial plans for more flexible contracts for inexperienced youngsters with less redundancy pay. RTVE, by law, is forced to retain some kind of service during industrial action, and the decision to shut down the signal (over disagreements on the strike operations plan) was heavily contested by RTVE management, forcing them to negotiate with the unions.

The moment of how the incident was recorded in Navacerrada contrasts what happened over at the RTVE master control in Torrespaña: According to El País (paywall), at midnight, filler imagery took over for a few minutes, before switching to the closedown routine (the late call and the national anthem).

Finally, and after hours of intense negotiations, broadcasting was resumed part-time the following morning. For most of the day, only the morning news (then-known as Buenos Días) and the midday Telediario was aired; these were shortened to 20 minutes. By 6pm, programming was fully resumed on both TVE-1 and TVE-2; these included reduced Telediarios intertwined with some degree of normal programming. All advertising was cancelled for the day (back then, RTVE was allowed to have commercial breaks, these were dropped in 2010 coinciding with a new Charter), causing TVE to lose 475 million pesetas (around two million 900k euros as of the date).

The quick turnaround to resume broadcasting caused Buenos Días to air some raw, unedited field tape of a violent incident, which only called attention to the importance of proper news editing and was quickly chastised by the CC.OO. union as “journalistic terrorism” (sic). By midday, however, with more imagery of the peaceful protests in hand, TVE’s coverage was more positively received by the unions. Another controversy surrounded the decision to air a cultural interview show, Más estrellas que en el cielo, by and with Terenci Moix, on the day of the strike; the show, already pre-recorded and edited, was broadcast on its normal late night slot against the wishes of Moix, who supported the striking unions.

TVE wasn’t the only service affected: by 1988, three regional TV networks existed in Spain, broadcasting in the regional co-official languages: TV3 (Catalan for Catalonia), Euskal Telebista (Basque and Spanish for the Basque Country) and Televisión de Galicia (Galician). All three channels suspended programming for the day and aired a test-card for most of the day, although newscasts did went to air.

Back to Argentina, here’s the intro for Telefe Noticias in 2001, during the height of the Argentinian economical and political crisis. That period is not always remembered as it was a short-lived era: it was a period where Nuevediario’s creator Horacio Larrosa was in charge of the station’s newscast (yes, back then it only aired an edition at noon) and tried to apply the aggressive, tabloid and often controversial styling of the infamous Canal 9 newscast of the 80s, but way more toned down, as it also focused on human-interest stories. The graphics also had a high-energy feeling, punctuated with Eurodance-style music.

Larrosa’s appointment came after a period of upheaval at Telefe, as Editorial Atlántida (its then owner) had become a close ally of then-President Carlos Menem and reports of censorship at the news department led to the resignation of many of the channel’s news anchors; this was further enhanced by the closure of Red de Noticias (Telefe’s first attempt at cable channels, which was losing steam to market leaders TN and Crónica) and the cancellation of the evening edition before the 1998 general election.

Larrosa was dropped after Telefe installed new management as Telefónica took over. He was replaced by Francisco Mármol, a Spanish executive which had worked on relaunching Antena 3 newscasts back in 1998, which began sweeping changes to revive the news operation: he installed a new look, with graphics from Guillermo Stein’s Steinbranding and music from Daniel Goldberg, who had been historically the in-house music composer for rival América TV. By August, he also relaunched the evening broadcast of the program, pairing veteran reporter Rodolfo Barili with Azul TV news anchor Cristina Pérez in an attempt to rival the long-running Telenoche pair of Mónica Cahen D’Anvers and César Mascetti (); after a time of strong rivalry with Telenoche, particularly after Mónica and César’s retirement, and after numerous anchor changes over at Artear, Barili and Pérez are now Argentina’s most watched news team.

Speaking of Antena 3’s news relaunch, back in 1997, Telefónica bought the station from Barcelona-based group Zeta. The group sought the acquisition as an opportunity to convince the then-Aznar government to allow the former telecom monopoly to build a presence in media to rival its biggest private competitor, PRISA, owner of Cadena SER and Canal+.

Initially, Telefónica didn’t make too much change to the channel’s content and news programming; however, from 1998, things began to roll on, as Ernesto Sáenz de Buruaga was hired as VP/Director of News and Current Affairs, with plans to make dramatic changes into the structure of the news operation, taking cues from the American Big Three news divisions. Behind the scenes, Sáenz de Buruaga began changing the production styling of the shows, modeling it to rival and copy the strict style of TVE’s Telediario (which he led since 1996), but with a strong American flavor.

After a period of transition, in which numerous anchor and visual changes were made, the new look programs launched on September 14. The shock of viewers was almost instant: a newsroom studio built in an unused warehouse at Antena 3’s HQ, less opinion pieces and more punchy SOT/VTs, an increased focus on sports news and a separate weather forecast. To get viewer’s credibility, Antena 3 successfully poached Matías Prats, then one of TVE’s main news and sport anchors, to anchor the midday news. This was also punctuated by new graphics and theme music from Pittard Sullivan.

Although it initially had a strong increase in viewer figures, these quickly declined: many people complained the new look shows were too aggressive and authoritative. As a result, the Telediario formula was quickly displaced and a more standard style was implemented, which was further enhanced by a newsroom redo in the summer of 2000, with a lighter styling and a much more open newsroom design, which was retained with tweaks until a larger remodeling in 2011.

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If they wanted their weather map to be truly authentic, they would have had a diplomatic scandal on their hands. That’s because in the 1960s, not only did West Germany not recognize East Germany, which isn’t that surprising, but it also didn’t recognize any of the post-WWII territorial losses to Poland and the Soviet Union, so ZDF’s first weather maps included vast swathes of Polish territory and even Soviet Kaliningrad:

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Speaking of this, there was something on East German TV during the heyday of this; this was a very (in)famous propaganda show called Der Schwarze Kanal (The Black Channel). Launched in 1960, it was a clear reaction to the concept of a similar programme by the ARD, Die Rote Optik (The Red Optic, which analyzed East German news programming from a Western perspective). Its host, Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler, the son of a Prussian vice counsel, was a former NWDR and BBC employee who was dismissed for its support of socialism; in the GDR, he became a communist propagandist and a contributor to state radio and TV programming before he was tapped to present the show.

The show was always aired on Monday nights after the first prime time program of that day, as it wanted to capture a large domestic audience, as well as the overspill areas of West Germany which were able to receive the state channel, DFF. However, the program was quite low rated, with Western programming often beating the propaganda analysis show.

The title referred in a very sarcastic and politically motivated way to both ARD and ZDF, and also it referred to an euphemism for a sewer; its final opening titles had a representation of an eagle (symbol of the Federal Republic) with a black, white and red chest band representing the flag of the German Empire during the pre-World War I era, as well as an antenna reminding of the first Tagesschau titles.

V. Schnitzler’s commentaries were always regarded as “polemical and aggressive” and with strong anti-Western overtones. In summary, Schnitzler edited and cut together extracts of Western television footage and recorded caustic, virulently anti-Western commentary over it. The show had some guest hosts when V. Schnitzler was unavailable, but most of the shows were hosted by him.

The show became a victim of the political changes in East Germany leading up to the Berlin Wall fall and German reunification. Its final edition, aired on October 30, 1989, dropped the normal format and became a hardline tirade to the changes on East German TV; he would attack the decision to drop the show on his memoir, Der Rote Kanal, published in 1992. A one-off conclusion edition was aired by one of DFF’s de-facto successors, ORB (now merged into the RBB), shortly after signing on that year.

The ARD-backed German Broadcasting Archive (which now houses the DFF archives at the former Adlershof studios) has retained around 350 editions of the show, and also has made a series of critical articles on the show, stating that neither the recordings of the comments have survived, as V. Schnitzler tended to wipe them after broadcast, but the manuscripts have been largely preserved by the Archive; the article also claims V. Schnitzler tended to manipulated the statements recorded from West German TV, through significant cuts in scenes and excessive re-editing of footage.

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In 1999, a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Eduard von Schnitzler appeared on a Berlin talk show where he came face to face with former East German dissidents and was roundly heckled for his unrepentant views (You can see a typical exchange at the 20:25 mark):

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A special presentation from WCVB Boston: the full 25th anniversary (1997) program of the channel once considered “the best TV station in the US”, due to its strong commitment to local programming.

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And here’s a 1982 special covering the station’s first decade on the air:

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