In 1959, the
third cabinet of
Chancellor Konrad Adenauer began preparations to form a second nationwide television network with the intention of competing with
ARD. Adenauer perceived ARD's news coverage to be too critical of his government, and believed that two of the organizations primarily responsible for its news reporting – the
Deutsche Presse-Agentur and
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, which produced the nightly
Tagesschau – were too close to the opposition
Social Democratic Party (SPD) to ever be able to report neutrally on his
CDU/CSU government. The new television company called the
Freies Fernsehen Gesellschaft (Free Television Society) but derisively called
Adenauer-Fernsehen (Adenauer's television) by critics, was founded on 25 July 1960. The
Deutsche Bundespost began constructing a second transmitter network on
UHF channels, which required new reception equipment. For older receivers, a converter was sold for about 80
DM (). As with the earlier
ARD television network, the location of the transmitters was carefully planned to ensure the entire country would be able to receive the programming. To test the transmitters and encourage the public to purchase UHF receivers, the federal government allowed the ARD network to create a temporary secondary channel,
ARD 2, which was broadcast daily from 8 to 10 p.m. ARD 2 began broadcasting on 1 May 1961 in the transmission area of
Hessischer Rundfunk and a month later expanded nationwide.
Interstate agreement The
SPD-led states of
Hamburg,
Bremen,
Lower Saxony, and
Hesse appealed to the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, which on 28 February 1961 in the
First Broadcasting Judgment blocked the plan. While building and maintaining telecommunications infrastructure, such as television transmitters, is a responsibility of the federal government under article 87f of the
Basic Law, the constitution does not extend these duties to running a television or radio broadcaster. Under Article 30, any power or duty not explicitly assigned to the federal government is reserved for the
states. Therefore, the court ruled only the states had the right to set up a television broadcaster. (Conversely, the same decision supported new
longwave broadcaster
Deutschlandfunk, which had been established by the federal government in November 1960; its focus was on external broadcasting and therefore under the federal government's remit to conduct foreign relations.) After this decision, in March 1961, the states decided to establish a central nonprofit public television network independently of Adenauer's effort. On 6 June 1961, the state
premiers signed at a premiers' conference in Stuttgart the interstate agreement on the "establishment of the public institution
Second German Television". On 1 December 1961, though not all states had ratified the agreement, it went into force in the states that had done so (
Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia,
Rhineland-Palatinate). The last state, Bavaria, filed the instrument of ratification on 9 July 1962.
Launch The station began broadcasting from
Eschborn near
Frankfurt am Main on 1 April 1963, with a speech by the first director general (Intendant), Karl Holzamer. The channel broadcast its first programme in colour in 1967. In 1974, ZDF moved its base of operations to Mainz-Lerchenberg, after briefly being located in
Wiesbaden. In November 1995, ZDF signed an agreement with
NBC News to share newsgathering resources. Since 5 October 1996, ZDF has broadcast 24 hours a day. == Finances ==