Values

1 2 3
1 | The RTL morning show “Guten Morgen Deutschland,“ here with Wolfram Kons and Anja Stehmeyer, was a new addition in 1987
2 | Equally spectacular: the ”Tutti Frutti“ show in 1990 with Hugo Egon Balder 3 | ”Knight Rider“ starring David Hasselhoff was
the first American series on RTL Plus in August 1985
and he reattached the crown with the
help of some chewing gum. The programmers
did not shy away from even
the most basic games and contests.
Hundreds of viewers call in; they had
never seen television like this before.
“A lot of things we did were very
homespun,” admits Thoma. “But our
decades of experience with live radio
helped smooth the way.” Thoma’s aims
were very simple. “We wanted people
to watch – that’s all.” And he couldn’t
really ask for anything more, as there
was no money to produce features, series,
or TV movies. The producers
couldn’t even rely on material from the
vault in the early years. “We owned only
12 fi lms when we started,” says
Thoma. RTL’s fi rst fi lm buyer, Erhard
Puschnig, remembers having a diffi -
cult time even getting his hands on
fi lms. The budget allowed for no more
than kitschy Italian movies or niche
fi lms from France.
The fi ve-member news team also
had diffi culty securing good video material
in the beginning. The station
couldn’t afford satellite vans and reporters.
For international stories, they
had access to material from Eurovision,
because Luxembourg was a founding
member of the European Broadcasting
Union. “But when it came to local stories,
we rarely had any video footage,”
remembers Marc Conrad, the former
editor-in-chief.
As RTL was unable to compete with
the public broadcasters in showing images
of the news, the station sought at
least to get a jump on the competition
when it came to broadcasting times.
The daily news program was broadcast
at 6:53 p.m. No other station had ever
dared to deviate from the tradition of
beginning broadcasts of serious programming
exactly on the hour. RTL
calls its 20-minute news show “7 vor 7.”
And what was lacking in video footage
was made up for by a creative presentation
style. When it rained, attentive
viewers could even hear the raindrops
on the studio roof.
In 1985, a fresh talent from the Henri
Nannen School for Journalism moved
from Gruner + Jahr to the news team:
Peter Kloeppel. Kloeppel, currently editor-in-chief
of RTL, looks back fondly on
his early days at the station. He started
work as a correspondent in Bonn. “The
competition would transfer their reports
to the main studio electronically,
but I was sending mine by courier,” he
says. “If the tapes were to be in Luxembourg
on time, I had to be fi nished by no
later than 4:00 p.m.” Given such constraints,
why did he choose to join RTL?
“I found the team really motivating, and
0.4 %*
1985
1.3 %
1987
12.7 %
1989
VIEWER MAGNET
21.2 %
16.7 %
1991
1993
RTL’s audience share development
in Germany
When it began, few people saw
RTL’s programs. During the 90s,
things changed. Source: AGF/GFK /
RTL market research.
* target audience age 14 - 49
the presentation style of the news was
fresh and modern.”
This fresh approach brought the
station high ratings – for its news, music
and quiz shows. “Our programs
weren’t there to impress us or the critics.
We wanted the viewers to like us,
and they noticed that,” says Conrad. In
his small broadcasting region, initial
surveys showed that RTL had nearly a
30 percent audience share when it was
on the air. Interest in advertising on the
new station grew.
Good contact with RTL Radio led
many advertisers to RTL television. In
its fi rst year, 30 seconds of ad time cost
1,000 marks (500 euros). Bertelsmann
was hoping to make up to 10 million
marks (5 million euros). It succeeded in
reaching that goal, which meant that
the new station had earned around 40
percent of its entire budget in the fi rst
year – an enormous accomplishment.
RTL retained this pioneering spirit in
the years that followed. Viewers were attracted
by such programs as the morning
breakfast show and the daily soap operas.
It wasn’t long before bare breasts
(“Tutti Frutti”) and screeching cars (Formula
1) were electrifying the lineup.
When Boris Becker and Steffi Graf won
Wimbledon in 1989, RTL had the exclusive
rights to the coverage. By this time,
the station was already broadcasting
from Cologne. RTL was growing up.
“In hindsight, the start of RTL was
clever, professional, and cheap,” says
Bernd Schiphorst. But in the station’s
early days, the atmosphere at RTL was
reminiscent of the title of the fi rst series
that RTL ever broadcast: “Der ganz
normale Wahnsinn,” or “Just the usual
craziness.”
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