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The story
SWR was established on 1 January 1998 through the merger of Süddeutscher Rundfunk (SDR, Southern German Broadcasting), formerly headquartered in Stuttgart, and Südwestfunk (SWF, South West Radio), formerly headquartered in Baden-Baden. The new corporation began broadcasting on 1 September 1998. Its predecessor organizations, SDR and SWF, were formally dissolved at 24:00 on 30 September 1998, SWR legally succeeding them with effect from 0:00 on 1 October 1998.
The existence of two public broadcasting corporations in southwest Germany was a legacy of the Allied occupation of Germany after the Second World War. The French Military Government established SWF as the sole public broadcaster in their occupation zone. This area was later divided into the states of South Baden, Württemberg-Hohenzollern and Rhineland-Palatinate. The American Military Government established SDR in Württemberg-Baden. When Baden, Württemberg-Hohenzollern and Württemberg-Baden merged to form Baden-Württemberg in 1952, the corporations were not merged, although SDR and SWF operated several joint services.
The two corporations had intended to merge in 1990, but the merger was pushed back by the reunification process.
Several channel mergers and changes took effect from 1 September 1998:
SWF 1 and SDR 1 became SWR1 Baden-Württemberg and SWR1 Rheinland-Pfalz: regional programmes for their respective states (Länder)
S 2 Kultur became SWR2
SWF3 and SDR 3 became the pop station SWR3
S 4 Baden-Württemberg became SWR4 Baden-Württemberg
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SWF 4 Rheinland-Pfalz became SWR4 Rheinland-Pfalz
DASDING was unchanged and continued broadcasting
The television channel Südwest 3 became Südwest BW and Südwest RP, and today transmits as SWR Fernsehen
A radio news channel, SWR cont.ra, was added in July 2002. This was relaunched with a new programme format on 9 January 2012 as SWRinfo. It was relaunched again as SWR Aktuell on 6 February 2017.
From Wikipedia’s article on Südwestrundfunk, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5