The Sandmännchen is an animated figure in German childrens’ television. It is shown every day on KiKa (”Kinderkanal”) just before 7pm.

The Sandmann shown today is evolved from an East-German production, as can be seen by some of the buildings and clothing in the series. The puppet arrives in the scene and introduces a short film to the children. After the film he sends the children to bed by releasing sand (”Schlafsand”) and then leaves.

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www.sandmaennchen.de

The Mainzelmännchen are animated characters that are show in short clips between advertisements on the ZDF channel. They started in 1963 are now there are over 40.000 different spots. Originally there were six characters, but recently a set of twins and a dog has been added.
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Germany has a variety of soap operas. One channel, RTL, shows three each evening. These are Unter Uns, Alles was Zählt and Gute Zeiten Schlechte Zeiten and are set in Cologne, Essen and Berlin respectively.

They deal with the relationships between the characters in their daily lives.

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ARD and ZDF are two public service broadcasters in Germany. ARD is made up of a number of smaller, regional broadcasters whereas ZDF is more centralised and is based in Mainz-Lerchenberg.

Major shows such as Wetten Dass…? and Fernsehgarten are broadcast by ZDF, and the daily news Tagesschau is broadcast by ARD.

Besides their own channels, both are involved in other public service projects such as KiKa - a channel for childrens’ programmes.

To hear a simple explanation in German, listen to the podcast:

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