North-Rhine Westphalia channel line-up announced

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Local media authority Landesanstalt für Medien (LfM) has put the final touches to the upcoming DTT rollout in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany's most populated regional state, having allocated the available space on the multiplexes.

20 television channels will form part of the 24 May launch to the Cologne and Bonn areas, comprising of 12 channels from the public broadcasters (ARD, ZDF, Phoenix, ARTE, Eins MuXx, KI.KA/ZDFdokukanal, 3sat/ZDFinfokanal, ZDFdigitext, WDR Fernsehen, NDR Fernsehen, MDR Fernsehen, Südwest Fernsehen) and eight commercial channels (RTL, VOX, RTL II, Super RTL, SAT.1, Pro Sieben, Kabel 1, N24).



On 8 November, another four commercial channels will be added; CNN, Eurosport, VIVA and Terra Nova, a bilingual German-French documentary channel compiled by Groupe AB. The new service, which covers topics such as ecology, environment, animals, science and other aspects of life on our planet, will replace the French media company's ailing German music channel Onyx-TV on 1 September.

At the same time, the reach of the multiplexes will be extended to cover Düsseldorf and the Ruhrgebiet, an industrial region in the Ruhr river valley.