Timeline
Media
1945
After the end of Nazi rule, in Germany initially newspapers may only appear under Allied licence. In the US zone of occupation the first licence is awarded on 1 August 1945 to
the Frankfurter Rundschau.

1950
The six West German broadcasting houses agree in Bremen to join forces to form the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” or ARD broadcaster.

1984
In Ludwigshafen the Programm-gesellschaft für Kabel- und
Satellitenrundfunk, or PKS for short, starts broadcasting.
This marks the birth of private TV channels in Germany.

1995
The first German newspaper, namely the leftist/liberal taz, goes online only six years after the foundation of the World
Wide Web. After its go-live,
the membership of the digitaz community surges.

1997
About 4.1 million German citizens over the age of 14 use the new online access channels at least occasionally. In 2014, the figure rises to around 55.6 million, or 79.1 percent of the over-14s in Germany.

2018
Some 21 million people in Germany use Facebook on a weekly basis. 1.8 million regularly use Twitter, 5.6 million Instagram. The leading social media site is WhatsApp, with 40 million weekly users.
