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German Television and Presentation

Discussion relating to TV in Germany (August 2020)

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TW
twolf
With lots of discussions recently on British TV about diversity and employing a range of genders and ethnicities on different TV shows, German TV still often seems to hold on to its more traditional ways.

Sat.1 has brought back the cooking show 'The Taste' starting tonight. All 4 of the judges / coaches on the show are white men. Sat.1 confirmed they feels its about who is best for the job, not fulfilling quotas.

*

"Why not? It's not about gender, but who fits to #TheTaste. You don't need a professional cook just to fulfill a quota. Only boys this year."

I'm not sure I could imagine ITV or Channel 4 tweeting a similar reply!
RE
Rexogamer

For example here when the broadcast of the European Handball Championships overran twice in a matter of a few days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqjbNZ3dLgA
(Sound left: 3sat; sound right: Das erste)


Firstly, thanks for sharing all this with us! It's great to hear from a German about this. Unfortunately, while I'm interested to see your second clip it appears you accidentally pasted the first one again?
MI
mici0123


Firstly, thanks for sharing all this with us! It's great to hear from a German about this. Unfortunately, while I'm interested to see your second clip it appears you accidentally pasted the first one again?


Oops. Yeah sorry, I edited the post and swapped the link. Very Happy
MI
TheMike
twolf posted:
With lots of discussions recently on British TV about diversity and employing a range of genders and ethnicities on different TV shows, German TV still often seems to hold on to its more traditional ways.

Sat.1 has brought back the cooking show 'The Taste' starting tonight. All 4 of the judges / coaches on the show are white men. Sat.1 confirmed they feels its about who is best for the job, not fulfilling quotas.

*

"Why not? It's not about gender, but who fits to #TheTaste. You don't need a professional female cook just to fulfill a quota. Only boys this year."

I'm not sure I could imagine ITV or Channel 4 tweeting a similar reply!

German TV regularly still broadcasts things that wouldn't be allowed to happen in the UK.
So, yes, shows in the UK tend to have either official or unofficial quotas to ensure diversity.
Elsewhere:
The "sexist" Philadelphia advert that was banned in the UK was still showing across Germany weeks later.
Little Britain and Come Fly with Me have also been shown in the last 12 months on German channels, whilst certain parts of those comedies have come under great scrutiny in the UK.
LE
Lester Founding member
It's been a while since I've watched the German channels in any great capacity, not really since the old Sky/Astra analogue days. I remember the commercial channel's presentation were very much influenced by the U.S. networks.

I also remember endless American shows dubbed terribly and ad breaks that lasted about 10 minutes, whilst the two national public broadcasters seemed very dated in comparison to the BBC. The local 3rd stations just seemed to have Oompah bands/schlager music a lot of the time.

I imagine things have moved on a tad since the late 90's and early 00's!
MI
TheMike
I imagine things have moved on a tad since the late 90's and early 00's!


With regards the commercial broadcasters, it's still as you describe - and they have found even more ways to annoy you with on-screen clutter and adverts.
KU
Kunst
Yeah German TV seems definitely influenced by some annoying trends of American TV, sometimes even worse : for instance, credits are often cut altogether
RD
rdd Founding member
Not German but their neighbours in Austria, ORF used to cut off the end credits of all imported programmes - there would be just a standard slide with the same short piece of music with details of the German dub (not always the same as the one shown in Germany itself, mind). That was back in the 1990s so I don’t know if it’s still the case.
KU
Kunst
I'm not sure, however I must say that the ORF and SRF presentation looks much slicker than the German public counterpart (ARD and ZDF), for some reasons
KU
Kunst
As for the ad break: I think German TV, similar to French TV, Spanish TV, and Italian TV, has less of them, but they're longer, which I find incredibly annoying

Also, something typical European, aside from some Eastern European countries and Scandinavia , times, scheduled times in particular (which are typically often not respected), are all over the Place, while UK TV tends to make things nicer (even continuity wise), with things at past the hour or half past the hour, at least tendentially

I prefer this approach, even if this means more fillers, especially with US productions, which do not even last 42/20 minutes these days.

Just look at the strange prime time on German TV: 20.15, while Italian and French TV (traditionally 20.30), has moved so late, esp. In Italy, there's no exact time for it anymore
Last edited by Kunst on 3 September 2020 11:32am
MI
TheMike
Kunst posted:
As for the ad break: I think German TV, similar to French TV, Spanish TV, and Italian TV, has less of them, but they're longer, which I find incredibly annoying

Also, something typical European, aside from some Eastern European countries and Scandinavia , times, scheduled times in particular (which are typically often not respected), are all over the Place, while UK TV tends to make things nicer (even continuity wise), with things at past the hour or half past the hour, at least tendentially

I prefer this approach, even if this means more fillers, especially with US productions, which do not even last 42/20 minutes these days.

Just look at the strange prime time on German TV: 20.15, while Italian and French TV (traditionally 20.30), has moved so late, esp. In Italy, there's no exact time for it anymore

The Tagesschau effect. Sat.1 and ProSieben attempted to break the 20:15 habit in the mid 1990s, but it failed and they fell back in line with every other broadcaster.
TW
twolf
Kunst posted:

Also, something typical European, aside from some Eastern European countries and Scandinavia , times, scheduled times in particular (which are typically often not respected), are all over the Place, while UK TV tends to make things nicer (even continuity wise), with things at past the hour or half past the hour, at least tendentially

Just look at the strange prime time on German TV: 20.15, while Italian and French TV (traditionally 20.30), has moved so late, esp. In Italy, there's no exact time for it anymore


I don't find German TV bad with this at all. I love that every night, all prime time shows start at 20:15 as I know that at that time you can settle down and choose what to watch, and things always start pretty much one time in my experience, its no worse than the UK.

German entertainment shows do tend to be very long, sometimes the whole evening. I think having the longer advert breaks, but often less of them also really isn't too bad. Often, on RTL, in a Saturday Evening show like 'Denn Sie Wissen Nicht Was Passiert', there won't be any adverts at all for the first 45 - 60 minutes which lets the show get going well, and then later on there will be adverts more often.

There is also often more on offer later in the evening on German TV. Love Island is currently going out at 22:15 - 23:45 each evening. It's hard to imagine a UK broadcaster going on that late with new programming. There are also only 2 (or sometimes 3) advert breaks in there, even though they're about 8 minutes a time.

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