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Das Erste logo
The principal German public national TV channel, Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen (First German Television), or just Das Erste ("The First" - often mistakenly called ARD), is the result of the collaboration of the regional television networks known together as the ARD.
The channel started broadcasting in 1952 from Hamburg, at first under the auspices of the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk as Deutsches Fernsehen ("German Television"). Beginning in 1954, the existing regional broadcasters of the Federal Republic cooperated to show the channel all across Germany. The Saarländische Rundfunk, which joined the ARD later, participated in the cooperative project.
From the outset, the stations explicitly wanted to reach people all over Germany, including the German Democratic Republic (GDR), so they broadcast from powerful transmitters in locations near the border, for example on the Ochsenkopf or in Torfhaus, thus ensuring that their channel was available on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Even today Das Erste is the only TV station received in the old Länder that is broadcast via ARD-owned transmitters. Over 100 principal transmitters (Grundnetzsender) are in operation and additionally way over 1000 supplemental transmitters (Füllsender) are used to reach valleys with the station.
Since December 1990, the channel is also broadcast through the transmitters of the former 1st GDR station (DFF 1). After the founding of the two regional networks MDR and ORB in Eastern Germany, those two channels also joined the ARD and participated in the programming of Das Erste, which, since the merging of Südwestfunk and SDR into the SWR and the parallel merging of SFB and Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg into the RBB, is carried by nine network companies and can now be received by satellite all over Europe.
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