Recently uncovered footage, long buried in East German
archives, confirms that television's first revolution occurred under the Third
Reich. From 1935 to 1944, Berlin studios churned out the world's first regular
TV programming, replete with the evening news, street interviews, sports
coverage, racial programs, and interviews with NS officials. Select audiences,
gathered in television parlours across Germany, numbered in the thousands;
plans to create a mass viewing public, through the distribution of 10,000
people's television sets, were upended by World War Two. German technicians
achieved remarkable breakthroughs in televising live events, including near
instantaneous broadcasts of the 1936 Olympic Games. The surviving footage - 285
rolls have been found so far offers an intriguing new window onto Hitler's
Germany. Television under the Swastika, drawing liberally from this footage,
opens up a surprising chapter in media history.
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn`t the English or the American media
that first created the concept of television `programming` as we know it today
(what an appropriate term in retrospect) the honour in fact belongs to the NSDAP
who in March 1935, began its national television service.
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