ZDF
ZDF — short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, literally Second German Television — is Germany's second national public-service television broadcaster, launched on 1 April 1963 and headquartered in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is a German channel, not a British one: it was founded by all the federal states of Germany, it broadcasts in German, and it is financed principally by the German broadcasting fee. Its place in a United Kingdom directory comes from reception. ZDF has been available free-to-air throughout Europe via the Astra satellites at 19.2 degrees east since the 1990s, so British viewers with a dish pointed at that position and a suitable receiver have long been able to watch one of Europe's largest public broadcasters direct from Mainz, complete with its news, drama, sport and entertainment.
ZDF is run as an independent non-profit institution under an interstate treaty. Unlike ARD, the other German public broadcasting system, which is a federation of regional corporations, ZDF is a single national station: its signal is broadcast throughout Germany with no regional variations or affiliates. Its best-known programmes include the heute news, established with the channel in 1963, and the Saturday entertainment show Wetten, dass..?, which premiered in 1981. Its director general since 2022 is Norbert Himmler, elected by the ZDF Television Council in 2021.
The Adenauer plan and the court ruling that created ZDF
ZDF exists in its present form because a federal government plan failed in court. From 1959 Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's government prepared a second nationwide television network to compete with ARD, whose news coverage Adenauer considered too critical of his government. A company called Freies Fernsehen Gesellschaft — derided by critics as Adenauer-Fernsehen, Adenauer's television — was founded on 25 July 1960. The Deutsche Bundespost began building a second transmitter network on UHF frequencies, and to test it and encourage viewers to buy UHF receivers the ARD was allowed to run a temporary second channel, ARD 2, from 1 May 1961.
States led by the opposition Social Democrats appealed, and on 28 February 1961 the Federal Constitutional Court delivered its First Broadcasting Judgment. The court held that while telecommunications infrastructure was a federal responsibility, running a broadcaster was not: under the Basic Law, powers not assigned to the federation belong to the states, and culture and media were state matters. The federal plan was blocked. In March 1961 the states decided instead to establish a central, non-profit public television network of their own, and on 6 June 1961 their premiers signed the interstate agreement establishing Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen. The agreement entered into force on 1 December 1961 in the states that had ratified it, with Bavaria the last to file ratification on 9 July 1962.
Launch, colour and the move to Mainz
ZDF began broadcasting from Eschborn, near Frankfurt am Main, on 1 April 1963, opening with a speech by its first director general, Karl Holzamer. It broadcast its first programme in colour in 1967, the year colour television was introduced in West Germany. After a period based in Wiesbaden, the broadcaster moved its base of operations to Mainz-Lerchenberg in 1974, where its broadcasting centre and administrative headquarters remain. Because its advertising was confined to a short early-evening window, ZDF concentrated on entertainment that would attract large audiences, and by the early 1970s its audience share was reported as high as 90 per cent on occasion in a two-channel era. Since 5 October 1996 ZDF has broadcast 24 hours a day. In November 1995 it signed a news-gathering sharing agreement with the American network NBC News.
Finance, governance and the broadcasting fee
ZDF is financed by the German broadcasting fee — cited at 18.36 euros per month per household — which must be paid by almost all households in Germany, with exemptions for disabled people and people receiving social assistance. The fee income is shared between ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio and is collected not by the broadcasters themselves but by the Beitragsservice, the joint collecting organisation of the ARD members, ZDF and Deutschlandradio. ZDF also receives income from sponsorship, programme sales and advertising, but advertising is tightly limited by the interstate broadcasting treaty: on the main channel it may be shown only on weekdays before 8 p.m., for a maximum of 20 minutes a day, and not on Sundays or national holidays. Between commercials appear the channel's famous animated mascots, the Mainzelmännchen — a play on Mainz and the Heinzelmännchen folk figures — created by Wolf Gerlach for the channel's launch in 1963 and still in use.
Governance reflects the channel's public status. The director general is elected by the ZDF Television Council, a 60-member body whose composition is set by the ZDF Treaty: representatives of the sixteen states, the federal republic, the Protestant and Catholic churches, the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and a large bloc of representatives of civil society groups. A 14-member supervising board oversees the director general's work, with particular attention to the budget. Directors general since 1963 have been Karl Holzamer, Karl-Günther von Hase, Dieter Stolte, who served for twenty years from 1982, Markus Schächter, Thomas Bellut and, from 2022, Norbert Himmler. ZDF became a full member of the European Broadcasting Union in 1963.
News: heute and heute-journal
News is central to ZDF's identity. The first heute broadcast took place on 1 April 1963, the day the channel itself launched. The main edition moved in 1973 to 7 p.m., where it remains, running for about twenty minutes including a weather forecast, and it is also shown on 3sat. Its title music has, since 1973, been preceded by the letters of its name in Morse code. In 1971 Wibke Bruhns became its first female presenter. Later additions built a family of bulletins: heute in Europa from 1999, heute in Deutschland from 2000, and daytime and express editions.
At around 9.45 p.m. the channel shows heute-journal, a longer, more analytical programme comparable to Tagesthemen on Das Erste. Where heute reports an event, heute-journal adds detailed background and interviews with politicians, business leaders and experts, with a daily report from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Its audiences sometimes exceed those of the early-evening bulletin. Current affairs coverage is completed by programmes such as Berlin direkt, Frontal, Auslandsjournal and the talk show Maybrit Illner, while the satirical heute-show, hosted by Oliver Welke since 2009, has become one of the channel's most talked-about formats.
Drama, entertainment and documentary
Beyond news, ZDF's schedule spans the full range of a national generalist channel. Its crime and drama output includes long-running series families such as the regional SOKO procedurals, Der Kriminalist, Notruf Hafenkante and Letzte Spur Berlin, Sunday-evening successes such as Das Traumschiff and Der Bergdoktor, and film strands including Rosamunde Pilcher adaptations popular across Europe. In entertainment, Wetten, dass..? — the big Saturday show created by Frank Elstner and long hosted by Thomas Gottschalk — premiered in 1981, was suspended from 2014 and revived in 2021; the antiques format Bares für Rares, hosted by Horst Lichter since 2013, became a daytime phenomenon; and ZDF-Fernsehgarten has entertained Sunday audiences since 1986.
Documentary is a ZDF strength. Terra X, on air since 1982, is its flagship natural history and history brand, supported by strands such as 37 Grad, ZDF-History and ZDFzeit. Culture is served by aspekte, running since 1965, and Das Literarische Quartett. Children's programmes historically shown on the main channel, such as Löwenzahn and 1, 2 oder 3, reflect the era before the dedicated children's channel KiKA. Sport, including major football tournaments shared with ARD, completes the offer.
Transmission, sister channels and joint ventures
Within Germany ZDF is carried terrestrially, by cable — where it has been relayed since the first cable pilot projects — and by satellite. Its first Europe-wide satellite broadcast via Astra 1C began in August 1993 during the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin, and today its standard and high-definition services are available free-to-air throughout Europe on Astra 19.2 degrees east. ZDF operates two digital channels of its own, ZDFneo, aimed at younger adults, and ZDFinfo, devoted to documentaries, both in HD. A commercial subsidiary, now ZDF Studios, manages programme sales, acquisitions and international co-productions. With other broadcasters ZDF jointly operates Arte, 3sat, KiKA and Phoenix. In March 2026 ARD and ZDF announced, under a reform treaty, that their news, documentary and young-adult channels would be merged into joint ventures in 2027, with Phoenix, ZDFinfo and ZDFneo as surviving entities — a sign of how the German public system continues to consolidate.
Identity, design and the Mainzelmännchen
ZDF's screen identity is one of the most recognisable in German television. The Mainzelmännchen, six animated goblin-like figures created by Wolf Gerlach for the launch in 1963, appear in short clips between commercials and have become cultural figures in their own right in Mainz and beyond. Graphic designer Otl Aicher created a corporate design for the broadcaster in 1976, and a further design, created by Lee Hunt, was introduced in February 2000, leading to the orange-led identity and logo in use since 2001. Its long-standing slogan plays on its name and number: Mit dem Zweiten sieht man besser — with the second, you see better.
Reception in the United Kingdom and digital life
For British viewers, ZDF is received exactly as it is across continental Europe outside Germany: as a free-to-air satellite channel on Astra 19.2 degrees east, requiring a dish aligned to that position rather than to the 28.2 degrees east position used by Sky and Freesat, plus a standard digital receiver. It carries no British advertising, no English commentary and no UK-specific opt-outs; its appeal in Britain is to German speakers, language learners and viewers who value direct access to German public broadcasting. Online, the ZDFmediathek offers live streams and catch-up, though live streaming is restricted to Germany, so satellite remains the straightforward route for a full service in the United Kingdom. More than sixty years after a constitutional court judgment shaped its creation, ZDF remains what its founders designed: a single, national, fee-funded second channel for Germany — and, thanks to satellite, a familiar presence far beyond Germany's borders.
