Das Vierte

Das Vierte is German entertainment television network owned by Disney Channels Worldwide Germany. The channel broadcasts movies, series, reality shows and documentaries programmings.

History[]

Music Box[]

As a 24-hour TV channel in the 1980s, Music Box was able to reach 60 million potential viewers in Europe and the Middle East thanks to satellite distribution. At the time, a satellite dish and receiver were very expensive and for this reason the channel had better viewing figures in countries where cable television was already used, such as Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. A special Italian version of Music Box was created in spring of 1988. Some Music Box shows were also retransmitted by Japanese broadcaster NHK. In 1986, Yorkshire Television region of the UK's ITV decided to go 24 hours a day, but little cash was invested in that service, and so much of the downtime was filled with a rebroadcast of Music Box. It was the first time that an ITV company regularly broadcast 24 hours. Music Box was originally based in the heart of London, in a building where Virgin Vision and Super Channel were also based, and later gave home to the London offices of CNN International and Cartoon Network. The address during the satellite years was 19-21 Rathbone Place, London.

On 30 January 1987, Super Channel was launched on the same satellite frequency previously used by Music Box on pan-European satellite Eutelsat 1-F1 located at 13° east, replaced during 1987 by Eutelsat 1-F4. For this reason Music Box stopped being a 24-hour TV channel, and Virgin set up Music Box as an independent producer of music programmes, continuing to broadcast its shows until the end of September 1987 for 10 hours a day on Super Channel. From October 1987 until January 1990 it was reduced from 10 hours a day to just a couple of hours a day of music programmes to be produced for Super Channel, with a two-month-long break in late 1988 due to problems related to the sale of Super Channel. Music Box ended its satellite broadcasts in January 1990 with the last pan-European showing of The Power Hour.

The creator of the three satellite channels, as director of programmes, was Julian Mounter, who joined Music Box from Thames Television. Recognising that income for satellite television would be slow in coming, Mounter set about negotiating revolutionary union deals to enable the use of smaller crews in the studio and on location. He commandeered a boardroom at the HQ of Thorn EMI as one of the studios and a small basement on Shaftesbury Avenue, and it was there that many of the programmes were made before better facilities were found. The channels broke new ground in graphics, promotion and presentation, and set standards and practices still followed today. Mounter left in 1986 to become director general of Television New Zealand, and the three channels then took on individual senior management.

Music Box as a satellite channel was said to have made a small contribution to the overthrow of eastern European communist regimes as, in its prime, it was illegally watched by young Europeans living in those countries using makeshift satellite systems. It gave many young people their first view of life in the rest of Europe.

Directors on the channel included Rob Jones, who took over from Mounter as director of programmes, Geoffrey Davies, Rod Fairweather, John Leach, Les Harris, Ludo Graham, Simon Sanders and Siubhan Richmond. Carol McGiffin was part of the production team.

After leaving satellite broadcasting, Music Box became a specialised producer of music shows for major British broadcasters and is now owned by Tinopolis, which also owns the firm Sunset+Vine, previously the owner of Music Box. The company's best-known programme of this period was the late night ITV show Forever which features pop videos and interview clips from stock footage.

Super Channel/NBC Super Channel/NBC[]

Launched on 30 January 1987, replacing 24-hour music channel Music Box, Super Channel was co-owned by all but one of the ITV companies at the time in the United Kingdom. Virgin Group had a majority stake in Music Box (60%) and would own 15% of the equity with the rest being split between ITV franchise holders including Granada, Yorkshire, LWT, Central, Anglia, Tyne Tees, Ulster, Grampian, Scottish, and Border Television. Thames Television was the only one of the ITV contractors not to participate. It competed with Sky Channel, forerunner of Sky One, which was the only other major pan-European satellite-channel around at the time. Unlike Sky Channel, Super Channel's syndicated output was less American and more European. Many of the programmes were what it called the "Best of British", sourced from ITV or the BBC, while ITN produced news bulletins (see also ITN World News). It also broadcast syndicated non-British European programmes such as the Dutch sitcom Zeg 'ns Aaa (with English subtitles).

Super Channel fared poorly, due to UK programming seen as unsuitable for European audiences, such as drama being seen as "too violent" or "too realistic", as well as a dispute with the British actors unions who demanded additional fees for viewing by European audiences which meant that it could no longer offer the 'Best of British to a European audience'.

Within a year, the ITV companies sold the channel to the Italian Marcucci family, owners of Videomusic, the first music channel in Italy, with a minority stake being held by Richard Branson's Virgin plc, and the programming changed from British to pan-European, although it continued carrying ITN World News bulletins.

At the beginning Super Channel was based in the heart of London, 19-22 Rathbone Place, London W1P 1DF, in the same building as Music Box; the building would later become the home of CNN International until 2007. For a number of months the channel's transmission facilities were provided by Molinare at Fouberts Place, London W1, it returned briefly to 19-22 Rathbone Place until the Marcucci family acquired Melrose House, 14 Lanark Square, in Limeharbour (London) where it set up a state of the art transmission facility.

In 1996, the channel (along with its sister channel CNBC Europe) was transmitted from the GE building in Hammersmith, London. The transmission suite used cutting edge (at the time) Pro-Bel COMPASS and MAPP automation, and Profile video servers for all commercials and promotions. Programmes continued to be played from tape, however.

In 1993, the station was having financial difficulties, and was taken over by the American company General Electric, then-parent of the NBC television network, and became NBC Super Channel. In 1996, the channel was renamed NBC Europe, but was, from then on, almost always referred to as simply "NBC" on the air.

Most of NBC's prime time programming was produced in Europe, but after 10 pm Central European Time on weekday evenings, the channel aired The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Later, hence its slogan "Where the Stars Come Out at Night." Most NBC News programs were broadcast on NBC, including Dateline NBC, Time and Again and NBC Nightly News, which was aired live. The Today Show was also initially shown live in the afternoons, but was later broadcast the following morning instead, by which time it was more than half a day old. That meant that all news portions had to be replaced with European updates produced by ITN in London. ITN also supplied the network with the main European newscasts before and after the GE takeover. The European weather was produced by the BBC at first, but was later taken over by NBC in the U.S.

NBC carried virtually no prime time fiction entertainment programs shown on NBC in the US, because they were usually owned and distributed by other studios under the fin-syn rules (which did not apply for Europe). NBC would have had to buy the rights for each country in order to show them on NBC, which would have been too expensive. Even for shows that NBC Studios owned itself, it was generally more financially viable to sell the rights country by country either to broadcast or cable/satellite channels than to air them on NBC. The most notable exceptions to this rule were brief runs of Profiler and The Pretender, as well as short-lived US sitcoms Union Square and Mr. Rhodes. That is widely considered to be one of the main reasons why NBC was ultimately not a success.

NBC stopped broadcasting to most of Europe in 1998, when the DFA (Deutsche Fernsehnachrichten Agentur) took it over and moved it to Düsseldorf. Most of the satellite feeds of NBC became either National Geographic or CNBC. NBC continued to operate on the German cable TV, fed by one digital satellite link from Eutelsat II-F1 (later Hotbird 5). In November 1998 the first German programming started airing. Programming was assembled with content from GIGA and CNBC Europe, as well as other shows. In 2004, NBCUniversal took over the DFA and consequently NBC.

On 29 September 2005, NBC was split into GIGA and the new channel Das Vierte. NBC was replaced by Das Vierte. In fact Das Vierte is still broadcasting with the licence of NBC on cable TV; on satellite, IPTV and digital cable it is a new channel. Das Vierte broadcasts a special version on cable TV, including CNBC Europe, and from 29 September 2005 to 31 March 2006, also GIGA. This is necessary to keep the licence and the cable channel.

Das Vierte[]

Das Vierte was launched by NBC Universal Global Networks in 2005 as an all-drama programming channel. The channel reached its 1% first-year goal with the expectations of doubling in two to three years. In 2008, NUGN sold the station to Mini Movie International Channel, owned by Dmitri Lesnevsky, as the station was losing money. Lesnevsky expected to turn the station around through rebranding then reselling it. In 2010, Phoenix Media planned to buy the station but that fell through. As of 2011, the station had a market share of 0.2%. In September 2012, Disney Channels Worldwide Germany announced a deal to purchase Das Vierte. Disney closed on the deal by December 2012. In April 2013, Disney announced that Das Vierte would become a Disney Channel in January 2014. Disney closed the channel on 31 December 2013.

Programmings[]

Series[]

7th Heaven
Air America
Airwolf
Alias
B.L. Stryker
Baywatch
Beverly Hills 90210
Charlie's Angels
Ein Haus voller Töchter
Gene Simmons Family Jewels
Get Smart
Ghost Hunters
Ghost Hunters International
Hart to Hart
Hawaii Five-0
It Takes a Thief
Law & Order
Magnum, P.I.
Melrose Place
Mike Hammer
Mini Movie
Murphy Brown
Northern Exposure
Once and Again
Quincy, M.E.
Remington Steele
Roswell
Sea Patrol
Simon & Simon
Starsky & Hutch
Tarzan
The Bill Cosby Show
The Fall Guy
The Persuaders!
The Professionals
The Rockfold Files
The Saint series
The Sullivans
The Time Tunnel
Unhappily Ever After
Viper
Zorro

Entertainment[]

Abenteuer Ozean
Autos mit Stil
Autsch TV… das gibt’s doch gar nicht
Berggespräche
Cut! Das Kinomagazin
Deutschland hilft
Die Schatztaucher
Echo und die Elefanten
Echt hart! Menschen am Limit
Geheimnisvolles Australien
Gesammeltes Wissen
Globe das Reisemagazin
Hope: Schutzengel der Wildtiere
Keep It Green
Look das Fashionmagazin
Neues aus der Medizin
Sammeln ist mein Leben
Schwindende Welt
Shamwari – Wildes Leben
Sport-Desaster… die spektakulärsten Sportunfälle der Welt
Wildwasser

Logos[]

Disney Media Networks Germany
Current channels

Former channels