To test the transmitters and encourage the public to purchase UHF receivers, the federal government allowed the ARD network to create a temporary secondary channel, ARD 2, which was broadcast daily from 8 to 10 pm. As with the earlier ARD television network, the location of the transmitters was carefully planned to ensure the entire country would be able to receive the programming. For older receivers, a converter was sold for about 80 DM (equivalent to €195 in 2021). The Deutsche Bundespost began constructing a second transmitter network on UHF channels, which required new reception equipment. The new television company called the Freies Fernsehen Gesellschaft (Free Television Society) but derisively called Adenauer-Fernsehen by critics, was founded on 25 July 1960. Adenauer perceived ARD's news coverage to be too critical of his government, and believed that two of the organizations primarily responsible for its news reporting – the Deutsche Presse-Agentur and Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, which produced the nightly Tagesschau – were too close to the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) to ever be able to report neutrally on his Christian Democratic Union government.

In 1959, the government of Konrad Adenauer began preparations to form a second nationwide television network with the intention of competing with ARD. History The ZDF administrative headquarters in Mainz The ZDF broadcasting centre in Mainz Historic logos Norbert Himmler, ZDF's director general, was elected by the ZDF Television Council in 2021.

The broadcaster is well known for its famous programmes heute, a newscast established in 1963, and Wetten, dass.?, an entertainment show that premiered in 1981, with a suspension from 2014 to 2021. ZDF is financed by television licence fees and advertising revenues. Launched on 1 April 1963, it is run as an independent nonprofit institution, and was founded by all federal states of Germany ( Bundesländer). ZDF ( pronounced ⓘ), short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen ( pronounced ⓘ 'Second German Television'), is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate.

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