[TVenthusiasm]

It didn't close strangely. It was announced already in March, when DW Director General Peter Limbourg announced it would cease broadcasting the German TV channel, due to its small global viewership (Limbourg estimated around 250k viewers regularly). Additionally, due to budget cuts and a focus on targeting audiences in regions where access to independent news is severely restricted. Therefore, DW is focusing on targeting these regions, but also switching to digital-first content provision, emphasizing its DW.com website and its social and mobile offerings (which were recently relaunched with a new design and interface) and reducing infrastructure and broadcasting equipment costs. DW would also continue to produce its German-language talk shows and discussion programmes, plus documentaries and lifestyle programming.

www.broadbandtvnews.com 

Then, in September, DW announced the two-fold strategy to wind up the German feeds it operated. First, DW Deutsch, which operated a 24-hour schedule in German for Asia Pacific viewers (which offered not only programming produced by DW, also offering selected shows from ARD and ZDF, including a simulcast of the Eurovision Grand Final every year), was merged with the DW Deutsch+ feed (serving the Americas, with four hours of selected English DW News programming inserted within the all-German schedule) with immediate effect that month. Then came the outright closure of the German TV feed.

corporate.dw.com 

Here's how the service quietly closed down:

youtu.be 

The DW Deutsch live stream has now been shut down.

Here's a longer recording of the closedown slide I recorded earlier today:

up.metropol247.co.uk