Berlin, 1960s?

[maxstenner]

I’m having a conversation with someone on Reddit who stated that his mother, who was born and raised in East Berlin, was a fan of Doctor Who back in the 1960s as a kid. To my knowledge Doctor Who never aired in Germany until the late 1980s with Sylvester McCoy. He has also said that she was a fan of Elvis, firmly placing this in the 60s. Any thoughts?

[John Wall]

Forces broadcasting?

[Jon Preddle]

May 30, 2022 13:53:12 GMT John Wall said:

Forces broadcasting?

There ma have been a US military TV service in the American Zone in Berlin, but it wouldn't have shown DW.

DW was shown on the UK BFBS TV service, but that didn't start until 1975, and was only available in parts of West Germany on a closed-circuit system, but not Berlin.

[Ralph Rose]

The Two, Peter Cushing films perhaps?

[barneyhall]

More than likely the dalek films. Or someone just trolling it'd take more than the word of some randomer on reddit claiming his nan saw something to make me get excited.

[John Wall]

I’d agree with the Cushing Dalek films, an obvious explanation.

[Jon Preddle]

The Cushing Daleks films were never released in West Germany, so they certainly wouldn't have been seen in the East. While they did get shown at the US military bases in Berlin, this wasn't until 1970s, and only to the base personnel, not the general population.

[John Wall]

Jon rolls in to bring us back down to Earth.

Perhaps it’s something projected back as clearly happened with SA where video shows were “remembered” as having been seen on 16mm.

[Jon Preddle]

As it is with a lot of 'memories' like this, things get conflated and/or mangled in the re-telling, especially when it's decades after the fact. The 'mother' probably did see something that was SF/Fantasy at the cinema or on TV - it may have been the "Flash Gordon" films, or even the 1954 US/French/German "Flash Gordon" TV series? - and it's been 'translated' onto being DW.

That depends of course on whether co-productions like this would even be available in the Eastern Bloc, given the censorship policies and the general 'anti-West' stances held by Soviet territories.

[RWels]

By the way - speaking NOT specifically about DW - plenty of British television made it across the iron curtain. Romania for example had a period where they showed BBC drama and as it happens the programming of East Germany is well documented online and they showed all sorts of foreign things. VERY few American series, but other NATO-ish countries were no problem.

[John Wall]

I think those in East Berlin and some of East Germany could receive TV from West Berlin.

[Richard Marple]

I heard that the The Forsyte Saga was shown on Soviet TV. Often material that could be twisted into an anti-capitalist message were shown behind the Iron Curtain.

This backfired when Dallas was shown in Romania & JR became a popular character.

[maxstenner]

I’ve been talking with him a bit further and he’s going to ask his mum for more details now. Hope we can find out what it is? Maybe 60s era Who did somehow be shown in East Berlin in the 60s?

[Robert Lia]

AFRTS ran Tom Baker episodes in the American zone in the 1980's but the East Germans jammed the signal in the Soviet sector of the city

[Ed Brown]

My father served with the RAF in West Berlin in the 1970s, and I lived in the city between 1972 and 1974.

At that time, there was no British Forces television service. The only English language tv service was the American Forces network. In order to receive the American service, we had to pass our portable b/w tv to the Americans, so that it could be adjusted to receive an NTSC 525-line signal.

My recollection is that the German civilian tv stations didn't use the NTSC format, so West German civilians in the city could not receive the Armed Forces network on their Japanese or Philips television sets.

It was common knowledge that the East Germans tuned in to the German language stations broadcast in West Berlin and West Germany. It was quite a laugh -- when I was in East Germany, as a tourist, I actually saw that all the houses had their tv aerials pointed west, to pick up the high power West German channels! When I was there, at least, the communists didn't routinely jam the West German stations.

So it was perfectly normal for a tv viewer in East Berlin to watch a West German channel, broadcast either from West Berlin or West Germany.

The Armed Forces network only aired American shows. We had a great time watching MASH, and re-runs of Lost In Space, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. But there were no British shows on the network, so no re-runs of Dr Who, sadly. It was great though -- they showed The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies, Mannix, loads of popular American tv shows. Sadly, not Star Trek. We saw MASH years before it aired in England. The American Forces network got shows the same season they aired in America.

The RAF ran a cinema, at Naafi-platz (officially Theodore Heuss Platz), in the city, which showed 1960s films (in 1972-74), and I remember 'Thunderbirds Are Go' during Saturday morning pictures, and there were classic American movies: I recall 'Gone With the Wind', but also the then-recent musical 'Paint Your Wagon'.

I don't recall the Germans being banned -- the cinema was next to the Naafi, on a public street in the centre of the city, not on one of the military bases. You had to pay in English money at the box office I think, but I can't believe any fuss would have been made if a German kid wanted to watch a film, although it only showed films in English. A lot of West Berliners spoke English, of course, because the Brits and the Americans had been defending the city for a long time by 1972.

I never saw a Dalek film in Berlin, at that cinema, nor on tv -- the American network only showed American films, to my recollection.

Dad became a huge fan of American football, because the American forces personnel were mad-keen on sports, and so sports programmes were a big draw on the tv. As far as I recall, the Americans only broadcast a single channel. Because we had a British tv set, a small portable set with a set-top aerial, we could also get German stations on the PAL-band; the technicians had added extra circuitry to allow us to also pick up the NTSC signal, they hadn't removed the PAL circuitry, so we could watch the local West German channels, but it was a dead loss because they were in German!

That's why I'm sure the Germans were using PAL, because our PAL set could still get them on the unmodified band -- the set had a VHF/UHF switch, and the Americans modified one band, the one they used, but not the other. The German stations were, I think, on the UHF band, and the Armed Forces network was on the VHF band. Remember, it was only a b/w service, just like the English 405-line b/w service, which also used VHF.

The American tv service didn't transmit "to the American zone". West Berlin was a small place, and anything broadcast within the city limits could be picked up anywhere in the city. We lived in the British sector, but tv reception was good, even tho' the transmitter was in the American sector, i.e. on the far side of the city. Actually, as best I can remember the transmitter was kind of centrally sited, so that the RAF personnel could get a decent signal; the Americans were nice people, perfectly happy to have the British tune in to their network.

For radio, we could easily pick up the Cologne transmitter in West Germany, where the BFBS radio station was located, so British BFBS were providing the whole city, plus all of Western Germany, with a radio service in English, news and entertainment: Dad's Army, The Clitheroe Kid, Steptoe and Son, are some shows I remember, plus a news service. Lots of BBC radio was aired, all from Transcription discs. So the Americans got a cod-BBC radio station for their troops, both in the city and across West Germany.