TV 'soft' sex seduces viewers in Germany
By Jack Kindred
MUNICH (DPA): Sex in the form of erotic films is big business in Germany. While explicit, hardcore pornography is banned from the airways, private broadcasters are increasingly programming so-called "erotic" movies to hike viewer ratings and increase advertising turnover.
The Kirch Group's loss-making digital platform DF 1 recently launched the nation's first erotic TV broadcaster, Blue Channel, in a bid to up its current 250,000 paying subscribers to half a million by the end of next year.
Launched in July, 1996 amidst much fanfare as "a new kind of television", DF 1 reportedly has lost 1.3 billion marks owing to lack of subscribers.
Approval of the Blue Channel broadcasting license by the Bavaria state's media watchdog BLM is regarded as a breakthrough in the trade, since previous applications for erotic channels received the thumbs-down treatment.
Applicants such as Britain's Fantasy Channel and America's Playboy are still awaiting the green light from authorities. Approval of the Blue Channel boosts their chances, say media observers.
Verena Weigand, responsible at the BLM for upholding Germany's stringent youth morals protection regulations, reviewed nine video cassettes of sex films and erotic magazines submitted by DF 1, and came to the conclusion none was hardcore pornography.
That came as no surprise, since most of the programming seen so far on Blue Channel were movies like the familiar softporno Emanuelle series from France already aired on private free TV since the beginning of the decade.
On the air from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., DF 1 subscribers pay 20 marks to obtain the Blue Channel.
In the battle for higher ratings, other commercial broadcasters have stepped up airing of erotic movies, and at the same time testing the limits of what is permissible.
Especially the ad-dependent channels RTL 2 and Vox have become increasingly aggressive in their selection of quasi-pornographic movies, a trend of concern to the nation's guardians of youth morals.
Germany's first pay TV channel Premiere airs softcore movies five nights a week for its 1.65 million subscribers, but like its private competitors, would prefer to show more than mere erotica. While European broadcasters like Britain's BSkyB and Canal plus in France, as well as Scandinavian networks, air coded hardcore programming, the same programs when imported into Germany are re- edited by the "Voluntary Self-Control" organization or youth protection authorities at the state media control centers.
As digital television shapes up - some TV soothsayers predict as many as 150 channels will be available - television companies more and more would like to know just what is permissible, in view of the $150 million cable companies in the U.S. annually reap from showing sex films. They argue that if German media remain so conservative, foreign suppliers from Scandinavia or Holland will soon meet the demand for sex films via satellite reception.
Media watchdogs and youth protection organizations would then be helpless to enforce anti-pornographic regulations.
In the 1969 Fanny Hill decision, a federal high court ruled that movies lacking a storyline just to depict people as "sex objects" were pornographic. Blatant exposure of sexual organs was also taboo.
In 1996, however, the federal states media treaty modified TV regulations, setting down slot times in which erotic films can be aired on the tube, including so-called "adult movies" after 11 p.m.
With the exception of cassettes showing bestiality or sex with children, the revised media treaty also allowed video shops to rent or sell pornographic movies.
Though figures are hard to come by in the shady, under-the- counter porno business, some experts estimate that hardcore cassettes comprise as much as 30 percent of video rental trade. The some 6,000 sex shops throughout Germany have an estimated nine million pornographic movies and CD-ROMs in stock, 1.5 million more than in 1997.
A recent survey conducted by the Munich Institute for Rational Psychology found that every fifth German consumes pornography at least once a month, while every 10th person indulges in hardcore product two or three days a week.
On the other hand, a survey conducted by the Forsa Institute for the programing guide TV Today found that only 6 percent of the 1,000 burghers questioned over the age of 14 were interested in seeing erotic movies on television.