West Germany, chastened by the disgrace of the Nazi state, went to the opposite extreme. The Allied occupiers rebuilding the shattered nation were determined that it should never come under the same sort of attentional control that had made ascendant Nazism possible. They therefore reconstituted the broadcast infrastructure so as to make it notably ill-suited for government or corporate propaganda. Both radio and television were decentralized, the network broken up into independent, nonprofit regional broadcasters. To preserve its independence, broadcast would be funded by licensing fees paid by every household and institution, including municipalities; the undue influence engendered by financial reliance on commercial advertising (as in the U.S.) or State grants (as in the U.K.) was thus avoided.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 428