Celebrities galore

week 26
the RTL Group intranet
Newsletter
26 Jun
June
e 20
2008
08
Celebrities galore
RTL Television and N-TV hosted the first
joint Summer Party in Berlin
Belgium
China revealed on Bel RTL
United Kingdom
New documentary formats for Five
Germany
Strong debut for Doctor’s Diary
Luxembourg
The Tour de France in 16:9 format
Celebrities galore
RTL Television and N-TV hosted the first
joint Summer Party in Berlin
Belgium
China revealed on Bel RTL
United Kingdom
New documentary formats for Five
COVER:
Peter Kloeppel, Angela Merkel and Anke Schäferkordt (from left to right)
In the background you can see an impression from the Summer Party in Berlin (Photo montage)
Germany
Strong debut for Doctor’s Diary
Luxembourg
The Tour de France in 16:9 format
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week 26
Relaxed atmosphere,
animated conversations
Angela Merkel (left) and Anke Schäferkordt
Some 600 guests from politics, business,
society and the media accepted RTL Television
and N-TV’s invitation to their first joint Summer
Party in Berlin on Wednesday evening. The
evening’s most illustrious visitor was
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, who took
time out from her busy appointment calendar
to stop by the Berlin studio for over an hour of
animated conversations with the broadcasters’
senior executives. RTL Television’s CEO Anke
Schäferkordt, RTL Television editors in chief
Peter Kloeppel and Michael Wulf, N-TV managing director Hans Demmel and Berlin Studio
Director Peter Kleim (Info Network) gave the
chancellor and all other guests a red-carpet
reception.
A flurry of photographers and camera teams
accompanied Berlin’s and Germany’s VIPs as
they crossed the red carpet into the site of the
festivities. Guests included various TV presenters and actors, along with high-ranking politicians like Dirk Niebel (FDP secretary general),
Guido Westerwelle (FDP chairman), Horst
Seehofer (Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture
and Consumer Protection), Wolfgang Tiefensee
(Federal Minister of Transport, Building and
Urban Affairs), Bernd Naumann (State Cultural
Minister), Ronald Pofalla (CDU secretary general), Hubertus Heil (SPD secretary general),
Reinhard Bütikofer (chairman Bündnis 90 / Die
Grünen), Ulrich Wilhelm (government spokesman) and Erwin Huber (CSU chairman).
Due to the large attendance expected, the
Berlin studio on Schiffbauerdamm had been
extended by a large cluster of tents, with an
open-air area in the middle, where cool drinks
and hot delicacies awaited guests as they
enjoyed the pleasant cool of a gorgeous earlysummer evening.
At the Summer Party jointly hosted by RTL
Television and N-TV in Berlin, Mediengruppe
RTL Deutschland presented its recently established subsidiary, Info Network. Its managers
spoke to Backstage, revealing the rationale and
strategy behind the establishment of Info
Network.
Germany - 26 June 2008
In her welcome speech, Schäferkordt emphasized the special importance of the channel’s
main news programme RTL Aktuell, especially
among young TV audiences, reporting that the
news channel N-TV has as many as six million
viewers a day, including a very high proportion
of decision makers. The Berlin studio is “a
backbone of Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland’s
political coverage.” RTL Television’s CEO took
the opportunity to present Info Network, the
latest addition to Mediengruppe RTL
Deutschland, to her guests. Schäferkordt pointed out that employees at the Berlin studio
were the first to switch to the production subsidiary as part of the ongoing business transition.
Info Network is the newly founded production company for news and magazine
formats within Mediengruppe RTL
Deutschland. The company produces the
footage for the news programme on RTL
Television, Vox and N-TV, as well as
magazine shows like Die 10, Prominent!
and Formel Exclusiv. Beyond its core
business, Info Network develops new
content and pilots for Mediengruppe RTL
Deutschland and also provides services
such as sales of video content.
Info Network took up operations on 1
February 2008 and is being expanded
gradually. Michael Wulf serves as managing director of Info Network GmbH, with
Dirk Rauser acting as his deputy. Info
Network is a wholly owned subsidiary of
Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland.
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RTL and N-TV’s have just hosted their first
joint Summer Party in Berlin ? What were
your impressions?
Peter Kloeppel: I think the premiere was a very
fortuitous combination of a relaxed atmosphere and animated conversations against the
backdrop of a beautiful summer’s day. The
positive response to the Summer Party showed
us that the combined strength of RTL and N-TV
is very well received by the powers that be in
politics and business.
You took the Summer Party as an opportunity to present Info Network, Mediengruppe
RTL Deutschland’s new news and magazine
subsidiary. What is the latest on the step-bystep establishment of the business?
Michael Wulf: In the past few months the first
few editorial desks at N-TV and RTL Television
were integrated in Info Network: the Berlin studio, the Landesstudio Süd in Munich, as well as
the foreign correspondence bureaus in
Moscow and Jerusalem. In the months ahead,
other departments will gradually follow, and the
week 26
move to Cologne-Deutz in summer 2009 will
complete the establishment of the company.
What responsibilities and departments will
be handled by Info Network in the future?
Michael Wulf: The Info Network will gradually
come to bundle RTL Television’s news and
magazine editorial desks as well as shared
central editorial desks and support functions of
RTL Television and N-TV step by step. The
national and international external studios are
also affiliated with the new company. The central editorial desks such as the Newsdesk will
handle the planning and production of content
that can be used across various channels. This
will intensify the joint production and use of
content, both between RTL’s various editorial
desks and between RTL Television and N-TV,
Vox, Super RTL and RTL II. However, the respective channels and editorial desks will continue to bear the editorial responsibility for their
broadcasts and their distinct programming profiles.
Hans Demmel, Peter Kleim, Peter Kloeppel, Michael Wulf
Peter Kloeppel with Hubertus Heil (SPD, left) and
Dirk Niebel (FDP, right)
Isa Gräfin von Hardenberg and Laurenz Meyer (CDU)
Ronald Pofalla (CDU) with Peter Kloeppel and Peter Kleim
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One goal of the Info Network is to sell the
produced content on to third parties, for
example to newspapers’ Web sites. How is
the business developing?
Michael Wulf: Our customer pool is growing
steadily. We’re happy with how things have
been developing so far.
The Berlin studio played a trailblazing role,
since this is where the RTL Television and
N-TV editorial desks have already been integrated into the Info Network since February.
What have your first experiences been like?
Peter Kleim: They’ve been good – and this is
not such a big change for us: ever since our
colleagues from N-TV’s parliament editorial
office moved in three and a half years ago,
we’ve worked together very closely in our offices, across the various channels.
What are the advantages, and what challenges did you face?
Peter Kleim: The advantages are that the
research and the shooting can be better coordinated and duplication of work can be avoided. In the past, the colleagues were part of
different broadcasters or of different editorial
desks, now they form a team in Berlin.
Nevertheless, it is essential that the correspondents retain an affinity with their old editorial
teams – that they continue to identify with RTL
Aktuell or N-TV and do their work with a passion. After all, we don’t want anything to change for the viewers.
Anke Schäferkordt welcoming the guests
RTL Television stars Peter Zwegat and Birgit Schrowange
Angela Merkel in conversation with Laurenz Meyer
and Peter Kloeppel
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China revealed
Belgian French-language radio station Bel RTL
broadcasts its two evening news programmes
on 23 and 27 June live from China.
Beijing 2008
Belgium - 24 June 2008
Monday 23 June’s edition of Bel RTL soir (from
18:00 to 19:00) examined how Belgians view
China, which will be hosting the Olympic
Games this summer. The presenters Barbara
Mertens and Pascal Vrebos interviewed JeanMichel Saive, who is a member of Belgian’s
Olympic table tennis team, and welcomed a
host of studio guests including Dominique
Demees, Amnesty International’s China/Tibet
coordinator, Samia Patsalides, the leader of a
Catholic University of Louvain mission to Asia,
and various Chinese who, after studying in
Belgium, decided to settle down there.
Bel RTL’s listeners will have another treat in
store between 18:00 and 19:30 on Friday, 27
June, when Barbara Mertens and Pascal
Vrebos will present a very special programme
live from the Belgian Embassy in Beijing that
will be devoted mainly to showing how China
has opened up culturally and economically
since the days of Chairman Mao.
Pascal Vrebos (left) and Barbara Mertens
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week 26
A whole range of new
documentary formats
Perfect Birth
Factual entertainment, commonly referred to as
‘docutainment’, is currently one of the hot
trends in international TV, providing entertaining, informative programmes that don’t tell fictional tales, but rather focus on stories featuring real-life characters, such as people with
unusual professions, exceptional abilities or
simply moving life stories.
Sue Davidson, Five’s Commissioning Editor,
Factual, responsible for the genre, said:
“Factual formats have always been successful
on Five, and I’m glad we’ll continue to have a
strong slate of fresh projects in this genre, offering viewers both new programmes and successfully established formats”.
Here’s a run-down of the new projects in store
for Five’s viewers:
Highland Emergency is a 30-part observational
documentary series based on unprecedented
access to the emergency services in the
Highlands of Scotland. In that beautiful, but
inhospitable landscape cameras accompany
local ski patrols, coastguard and emergency
services as undertake bold rescues on land,
sea and mountains in all weathers.
The four-part series My Strange Brain documents the lives of people with rare brain disorders, ranging from Alien Hand Syndrome,
which makes people’s hands behave independently of their will, to Foreign Language
Syndrome, which causes people to suddenly
spout a foreign language.
Desperately Seeking The Perfect Birth presents
three women with very different views about
what constitutes a perfect birth. The documen-
Five wants to continue strengthening its range
of non-fiction entertainment and has therefore
commissioned a range of new factual formats,
comprising series and one-off programmes.
United Kingdom - 24 June 2008
tary will show whether or not their preconceived ideas actually tally with reality.
Climbing The Giants follows adventurer Guy
Grieve, who travels to Australia to climb one of
the world’s tallest trees.
The documentary tentatively entitled Lifesavers
999 reveals the logistics that make it possible
to get organs from their donors to their recipients in the shortest possible time.
The three-part series Army Chefs will give viewers an unusual insight into life in the British
Army, presenting the unsung heroes who feed
Britain’s soldiers, serving up anything from simple canteen fare to meals fit for royalty.
In addition to all these programmes, Five has
announced a new season of the hit series
Extraordinary People. All in all, the channel has
12 new programmes lined up, including one on
the tallest man in the world, a 36-year-old
Ukrainian who will only survive if doctors succeed in stopping his constant growth. The format Robochick and the Bionic Boy also takes
up a medical theme, telling the stories of two
patients treated using new bionic methods. The
Rainman Twins (working title) showcases the
remarkable lives of the autistic savant twins Flo
and Kay Lyman, discovered by TV presenter
Dave Wagner, who amassed footage of them
over a 15-year period. Outlaw Births explores
‘freebirthing’, the controversial childbirth involving mothers giving birth at home, without any
medical assistance or midwife present. The
documentary follows three women from the
moment they opt to ‘freebirth’ to the actual
delivery of their babies.
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week 26
Sales offer successfully
established
In the upcoming booking season, IP Deutschland will again sell airtime on RTL
Television, Vox, Super RTL and N-TV using the sales offer introduced last year.
Germany - 25 June 2008
An interim stocktaking for the 2008 booking
season indicates that the new ad sales offer
has been successfully established. It meets the
market’s need for planning calculability while
still providing flexibility. At the same time it facilitates the greatest possible transparency. The
market appreciates both the clarity of the system and the consistently good performance of
the IP portfolio.
Martin Krapf, Managing Director of IP
Deutschland, said: “The feedback we’ve been
getting from the marketplace bears out our
approach: our marketing products meet the
needs of both customers and agencies, the
sales offer is well understood on both sides.
After months of talking about models, we’re
finally talking about performance again, and
about how we can help advertising customers
reach their marketing objectives!”
IP Deutschland’s prices remain stable: the cost
per mille has merely been adjusted to reflect
inflation.
These ratings don’t need doctoring
Doctor’s Diary – Männer sind die beste Medizin, RTL Television’s humorous new
series featuring Diana Amft as a female doctor caught between her medical career
and a chaotic love-life, attracted an audience in the millions on Monday evening from
20.15.
Germany - 25 June 2008
The first of the two back-to-back episodes
drew 2.72 million viewers, and a 16.3 percent
share of the young target market. The second
part, which started at 21.15, bested this performance by attracting 3.14 million viewers. 18
percent of 14- to 49-year-olds made it the evening’s most-watched prime-time programme
among young demographics.
Doctor’s Diary is all about the life of Dr.
Gretchen Haase (Diana Amft), a young physician who needs a clear head to survive in her
responsible job. But Cupid’s caprices, problems with her figure, and her colleagues all
contrive to make sure her life remains thoroughly chaotic. The attractive blonde finds
herself being pursued both by the ward’s big
macho Dr. Marc Meier (Florian David Fitz, of
Meine verrückte türkische Hochzeit – My Crazy
Turkish Wedding fame) and by the mysterious
Dr. Mehdi Kaan (Kai Schumann, Toter Mann –
Dead Man).
Doctor's Diary is a Polyphon Film- und
Fernsehgesellschaft production. Grimme
Award winner Bora Dagtekin (Türkisch für
Anfänger – Turkish for Beginners) supplied the
concept and headwriting.
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week 26
Strength clout on the
Web
Mondadori France is teaming up with M6
Publicité by allowing the latter to take care of
its 13 websites.
www.autojournal.fr
With more than 2.5 million unique visitors every
month, Mondadori France is revealing the full
extent of its ambitions on digital markets: naturally on the Internet, but also vis-à-vis mobile
applications, Audiotel hosting and the syndication of content. Allowing M6 Publicité to sell the
advertising on their websites is a logical extension of the steps Mondadori France has taken
since the start of the year to boost its technological and marketing capabilities and enhance
its presence online.
The inclusion of these 13 new media websites,
all of which are powerful and highly popular
brands, is further boosting M6 Publicité’s clout
on the Web, especially with respect to groups
of female Internet users and youngsters interested in cars. It also confirms the advertising
sales house’s desire to build up a top range of
media that sets new standards in the marketplace.
France - 26 June 2008
M6 Publicité already has a strong Internet presence, with websites attracting 10.3 million unique visitors in May 2008, but now it is enhancing its presence and boosting its expertise as
an Internet media advertiser, responsible for
almost 50 websites whose editorial richness
provides an ideal backdrop for the implementation of effective media strategies. By marketing
Mondadori’s websites, Groupe M6 is showing a
strong desire to handle the ad sales for other
companies’ websites, a trend begun with RTL
Radio France’s websites early in 2008.
Mondadori’s websites ideally complement the
media portals run by M6 Publicité, which already markets various TV and radio websites.
As from 1 July 2008, M6 Publicité will be
responsible for the Mondadori Digital
websites:
www.bibamagazine.fr
www.canalstars.fr
www.closermag.fr
www.fhm.fr
www.guidetele.com
www.pleinevie.fr
www.telepoche.fr
www.telestar.fr
www.topsante.com,
www.addxonline.com,
www.autojournal.fr,
www.autojournal4x4.fr
www.sportauto.fr.
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The Tour de France in
16:9 format!
Using leading-edge technology, RTL Télé
Lëtzebuerg will be running a first ‘live’ test of
its new wide-screen 16:9 film format before
launching it in September 2008.
Luxembourg - 26 June 2008
At the end of the summer, RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg
will take a major step forward by broadcasting
its programmes in the new 16:9 format. The
launch of this format, which will replace its 4:3
predecessor, is scheduled for 15 September
2008.
In another first, the various stages of the Tour
will also be streamed on the website www.rtl.lu,
where Internet users mad about cycling will find
all the intermediate results and rankings, photos and interviews as well as the coverage
broadcast on radio and TV.
However, starting on 5 July 2008, viewers will
have a sneak preview of the new format when
RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg’s coverage
of that TV event par excellence,
the Tour de France, affords
audiences in Luxembourg a first
glimpse of the new viewing quality awaiting them. Accordingly,
every day starting at 15:00, all
the stages of the Tour will be
broadcast live in 16:9 format.
Commentating on the Tour will
be Marcel Gilles and other
members
of
RTL
Télé
Lëtzebuerg's sports team.
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week 26
Into the Future
Super RTL wins the ‘Visions for Leadership Award 2008’, for having the most innovative
business model in the media sector.
Germany - 20 June 2008
Women viewers had a date with M6 on Wednesday
evening
On Wednesday evening, M6 was the most popular channel among housewives aged under
50 thanks to hitherto unshown episodes of its French series Cellule Identité, which gave it
an audience share of 22.1 per cent.
France - 20 June 2008
Do people keep secrets actually?
At 20:00 on Monday, 30 June, M6 will be launching its summer saga, a new French daily
soap comprising 80 22-minute episodes.
France- 24 June 2008
Farmers pull in viewers in their droves
On Monday evening, M6 was the leader in overall audience terms thanks to the launch of
season three of L’amour est dans le pré.
France - 25 June 2008
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week 26
Gold and bronze awards for RTL II campaigns
RTL II landed two awards at this year’s PROMAX / BDA International Conference in New
York, the world’s top annual event for professionals working in TV design, marketing and
promotion.
Germany - 25 June 2008
To Promote Ross Antony
The full-service merchandising and licensing agency now counts the vastly popular entertainer Ross Antony among its clients.
Germany - 26 June 2008
TT Assen live
On Friday 27 and Saturday 28 June, RTL GP on RTL 7 will cover the Netherlands' biggest
one-day sporting event: the Assen TT Circuit. Just like last year, this Moto GP promises to
be a tremendously exciting race.
The Netherlands - 26 June 2008
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week 26
People
Natasha Kaplinsky’s
maternity leave cover
announced
Natasha Kaplinsky
United Kingdom - 24 June 2008
The famous presenter Natasha Kaplinsky has
been the face of Five News since February
2008. When she takes her maternity leave later
this year, her colleagues Matt Barbet and Isla
Traquair will cover for her.
As RTL Group’s British broadcaster announced
last Friday, the two interim Five News anchors
will share Natasha Kaplinsky’s job, presenting
the main news on alternate days.
Matt Barbet (31) came to Five in October 2007
after spending four years as one of the main
presenters at BBC London. Isla Traquair has
been on the Five News team since February
2008, after working as a reporter and presenter
at ITV News.
David Kermode, Editor of Five News, said:
“Matt and Isla are the ‘Young Turks’ of TV news
– they are a dynamic duo who represent all that
is great about Five News.”
Natasha Kaplinsky added: “Matt and Isla are
two of the brightest stars of the programme
already and it’s great to see them getting the
recognition they deserve. I’m absolutely thrilled
for them.”
Since Kaplinsky took over as anchor of Five’s
17.30 and 19.00 news in February 2008, viewership has increased by an impressive 50 percent.
Isla Traquair (left) and Matt Barbet
13
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