East German TV news was often full of propaganda, so East Germans preferred to watch West German ARD Tagesschau news that could be received by antenna even if it was officially forbidden.
Originally the show was running at 20:00 (8 p.m.), at the same time as the West German news program Tagesschau (1952) but to avoid overlapping with the other news program, probably also in order to avoid that the viewers would watch the West program rather than the East program, the start of "Aktuelle Kamera" was moved to 19:30 (7:30 p.m.).