Media

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.