Aktuelle Kamera - Schedule

Schedule

Aktuelle Kamera's main edition was originally scheduled at 8pm before being moved to 7:30pm in the 1960s, so as not to coincide with the major West German newscasts, ZDF's Heute at 7pm and the ARD's Tagesschau at 8pm, both of which were widely watched in East Germany. The broadcast lasted 20 minutes until 1972 when it was expanded to a full half-hour.

Starting in the mid-1970s, another 30-minute edition was presented on DDR2 (launched in 1969) around 9:30pm. Prior to that, both channels aired Aktuelle Kamera simultaneously at 7:30pm, then repeated the next morning when DDR1 signed on around 9:30am (later 8:30am), before airing school-oriented programming, co-produced by the DDR-FS and the GDR Education Ministry.

News summaries were added as the transmissions increased during the day. There was a bulletin at the end of the morning programmes (i.e. between 12 noon and 1pm) and another, the afternoon news update, at 5pm on DDR1. DDR2's evening schedule always began with the news at 6:45pm (later 5:45pm and 6:55pm). Late newscasts didn't appear until the 1970s, when DDR1 screened a headline update following the magazine programmes, around 10pm. From the 1980s, Aktuelle Kamera's final round-up was the last scheduled programme at the end of the day.