Two Views

A cold-war skirmish was fought last week on the German television front. The Communists got their East zone transmitter on the air first, just in time for a heavyhanded salute to Stalin's birthday, featuring such numbing fare as a film called Young Constructors of Socialism and a forum show with the jawbreaking title Tribune for German Patriots in the Fight Against the Enslavery and War Policy of the American West German Monopoly Masters. Trumpeted a Red spokesman: "East zone TV will be a great educational force untainted by the frivolous bourgeois influence of the West."

A hundred hours later, on Christmas Day, West zone viewers saw their first regular telecast: a Christmas play, carols and hymns, man-in-the-street interviews at Cologne Cathedral. Promised for the future: sportcasts. ballet, drama, pickups of shows from cabarets. In the hope of capturing viewers in Communist-occupied Germany, the West zone is broadcasting with Russian-type equipment and transmits the same 625-line TV picture that is standard behind the Iron Curtain. The Reds have met this threat by refusing to sell TV sets to individuals. Instead, receivers are installed only in factories, meeting halls, schools and restaurants where viewers can see only what their Red masters want them to see. Both West and East zones are limiting telecasts to a few hours a day. Explained one West German official: "We don't want to inflict on German family life the damage suffered in the U.S. because of unlimited telecasting."

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