Until a few years ago, East Germans were discouraged from watching Western television and aerials turned to the West were ripped down by Party vigilantes. But it was a difficult rule to enforce. It seemed more sensible to improve their own programmes and it worked. Today in the two Berlins you can switch from East to West and find a comparable selection of programmes. Of course attitudes are different, and even if each side claims to be uninterested in its potential audience across the border, there is, nonetheless, a continual television dialogue across the wall.
Charles Wheeler, who was BBC correspondent in Berlin at the end of the war, reports on the two societies and their television.