Germany local news media

As Europe's largest economy and second most populous nation, Germany is a key member of the continent's economic, political, and defense organizations. European power struggles immersed Germany in two devastating World Wars in the first half of the 20th century and left the country occupied by the victorious Allied powers of the US, UK, France, and the Soviet Union in 1945.

With the advent of the Cold War, two German states were formed in 1949: the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). The democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and security organizations, the EC, which became the EU, and NATO, while the Communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification in 1990. Since then, Germany has expended considerable funds to bring Eastern productivity and wages up to Western standards.

German broadcast media is a mixture of publicly-operated and privately-owned TV and radio stations. National and regional public broadcasters compete with nearly 400 privately-owned national and regional TV stations. More than 90% of households have cable or satellite TV, and hundreds of radio stations are in operation, including multiple national radio networks, regional radio networks, and a large number of local radio stations. Germany has over 60 million Internet users.

Each small town in Germany, as well as each region, has its own daily newspaper. Larger cities have several newspapers. The national print media market is dominated by four large publications: Die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Die Zeit, and Der Spiegel, the most prominent German news magazine.