Salon Helga

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Stermann and Grissemann 2007

Salon Helga was a weekly radio broadcast with satirical content that was broadcast between 1989 and 1994 on the Austrian radio station Ö3 and between the beginning of 1995 and June 2014 in the FM4 program. Since September 19, 2014, the program “Top FM4” (moderated by Hannes Duscher and Roland “Roli” Gratzer ) has been running on the former broadcasting slot of Salon Helga (Friday evening ). The broadcast initially only lasted about half an hour, until it was expanded to 60 minutes. It ran every Friday between 8.15pm and 9.30pm. Salon Helga was, besides the Swound Sound System , one of the only two FM4 programs that were taken over unchanged from the Ö3 program at that time in 1995.

content

Salon Helga was designed and moderated by Christoph Grissemann and Dirk Stermann between 1989 and 2014 . Over the years, the duo developed their unmistakable style, a mixture of absurd, literary and deliberately clumsy puns . Tragic-comic short stories, telephone joke calls and parodies of other media (for example the alpine saga Wurzel, Tunten test snack stations or the casting show Philomania) are the main components of the program.

The only element that has remained unchanged since February 19, 1989 was the so-called “Modern Goodnight Dialogue” at the end of every broadcast, which is spoken to the final song Tornerò from I Santo California (abridged version):

  • Stermann: "Sleep well!"
  • Grissemann: "You too!"
  • Stermann: "I love you."
  • Grissemann: "You too."

Only in the case of programs that were only moderated by one of the two did the solo version sometimes appear: “Sleep well. I love you."

history

From the beginning until 1992

Salon Helga originally emerged as a satirical niche within the Ö3 broadcast ZickZack . The two protagonists of the show, Christoph Grissemann and Dirk Stermann , got to know each other within the ZickZack editorial team and initially created completely irony-free reports. In the first few years they embodied the fictional characters Hans Herbert and Hans Christoph, which could be seen in the signature until 2008. The defining feature was already found back then - dry humor, unprofessional looking, awkward behavior as a deliberately set contrast to the mainstream of youth culture at the time, which was embodied on ORF through programs such as X-Large or The Big Ten . At this time there was also no later important and typical Salon Helga music (see below). Instead, the usual Ö3 music program was played. At first, the show was controversial within the Zigzag team. At the beginning of 2005, Grissemann stated in an interview on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of FM4 that the then main department head Society, Youth and Family, Rainer Rosenberg, had saved the program from being canceled.

1992 to 2000

When Martin Blumenau was promoted to editorial director of ZickZack in 1992, the program, which had meanwhile built up a certain fixed fan base, became a weekly institution and the broadcasting time was extended to one hour. After this turning point, the typical music program began to develop. The general conditions that were met by the salonists, who from now on addressed each other on the air by you and by surname, were as follows: The title had to be produced in Germany, have a German text and not be hip-hop . Exceptions to this rule were the aeronauts from Switzerland and Christoph and Lollo, who were discovered by the Salonists themselves . Starting in 1993, Salon Helga played a pure music program every year on Good Friday under the motto “no jokes - just music”. The first German-language album by Element of Crime , Back then Hinterm Mond in autumn 1991, coincided almost simultaneously with Salon Helga, which had become a “satirical full program”. A partnership developed between Element of Crime and Salon Helga: The new release of an Element of Crime album was always the occasion for a special edition, most recently on September 30, 2005. But also new releases of cabaret CDs by Gerhard Polt , audio books by Rocko Shamoni or telephone joke and radio play productions by Studio Braun were granted similar special programs in the early 2000s.

During this time, still on the frequencies of Ö3, the unmistakable trademarks of the show developed: small punchlines for which disproportionately long introductions read by professional speakers like Nina Strehlein are played. Out of this, absurd little stories developed, which were already the subject of German studies. In one story, for example, Ronnie Urini and Robert Lembke meet at the Munich Oktoberfest. The joke calls , with which many listeners initially associated the salon , especially in the lobbies of the Hilton hotel chain around the world , or in search of Dean Martin , who is supposedly lying around drunk in some hotel bar, were first practiced after 1992.

In 1995 Grissemann and Stermann were founding members of FM4 , where the program was first broadcast on January 20, 1995. In the first year FM4 was broadcast, they caused a (staged) small media scandal by announcing in the November 3, 1995 issue that they would go their separate ways in the future. Large parts of the public believed that at the time. In the same year they began to comment on the Eurovision Song Contest ironically and were awarded the Prix Futur in the radio play & information category for a one-hour program designed for Ö1 -Kunstadio. At the same time, the two radio producers left the Salon Helga format within FM4 and took care of programs such as Radio Blume and the annual Christmas program Christmas without friends.

Salon Helga versus Jörg Haider

Because of the statement made in the context of the formation of a government in Austria in February 2000 in the context of a satirical interview with a small cultural newspaper from Linz “I think if you wanted to stop Haider at the moment, you would have to shoot him”, the duo saw themselves as being charged with inciting murder across from. When this incident was publicly announced by Jörg Haider himself in a ZIB-2 live interview at the beginning of February 2000 in the days around the turbulent start of the blue-black coalition , the salonists were immediately banned from broadcasting by the ORF . During this time, reruns were played on the broadcasting station. The interview became the subject of parliamentary debates at short notice, but Grissemann and Stermann were able to settle the dispute with Haider relatively quickly by formally apologizing. This enabled the salon to go back on the air before summer 2000.

Participation in the Song Contest qualification 2002

In the years since the turn of the millennium, the style of the show began to change very slowly. While Grissemann and Stermann were still widely regarded as insider tips in the 1990s, they have now gradually become known to a larger audience. In 2002, the two of them took part in the Austrian elimination for the Song Contest with the title The Most Beautiful Thing in the World and ended up in second place behind Manuel Ortega . On May 25, 2002 they provided the song contest with their ironic comments for the last time. What was noticeable for listeners who regularly followed the program for longer was the gradual suppression of the tragicomic short stories. All in all, there was a tendency towards improvisation towards a kind of ironic fireplace chat . However, the main content of the program has remained so far: satirical media monitoring, primarily pre-produced series for their show Show Royal on the Berlin radio station Radio Eins, such as Die Tierärztin vom Jadebusen or Fräulein Achterbahn . During this time, the classic phone pranks became noticeably fewer, until they ceased completely around the start of the television program Willkommen Österreich . The music program has also become noticeably wider since 2002, there has not been such a tight rotation of titles as before.

New identifier

With the increased cabaret and television activities of the duo Stermann and Grissemann in the weekly program Willkommen Österreich , the salon had been transformed into an almost pure talk show since the beginning of 2008. The show took a 14-week summer break in June 2008, the longest in its history. A few weeks later, the program registered at the usual slot with the slightly changed name Salon Royale (although still announced as Salon Helga on the FM4 website ) and with a new signature. This consisted of the Eurovision anthem and the program title spoken by a female voice with an English accent. This was due to the synchronization of the program with the Show Royale on Radio Eins from Potsdam, which was also indicated by the subtitle 3sat-Wochen / Drei-Sat-Wochen . When the Show Royale was discontinued in autumn 2011, however, the original identifier returned to the FM4 program. The music titles were no longer selected entirely by the two moderators themselves, as was the case until 2005, but rather titles from the entire daily program of FM4 (mostly German-speaking performers) are used.

Salon Helga and music

Some mainly German-speaking bands and their songs - mostly members of the Hamburg School - achieved a real cult status in Austria, especially in the 1990s through Salon Helga. Some examples are:

In addition, the show occasionally surprises with performers that are actually completely untypical for a modern youth show, such as Harald Juhnke , Manfred Krug , Reinhard Mey and Nena . In 1997 also, after the accidental death of Princess Diana , the Elton John -Stück Candle in the Wind more than exhausted.

For a very long time, music by Dean Martin was played almost exclusively in Salon Helga . The motto was: "We play Dean Martin until he dies." But that was given up a while before his death. When Dean Martin actually died on December 25, 1995, there was a special broadcast.

From behind

In 1994, the first (and only) CD of "Salon Helga" was released under the title Von hinter, with the participation of the groups Die fabulöse Thekenschlampen , Stoppok , Bobbe Jaan and the Lassie Singers , on the Spray label ( Sony Music Austria ). It contains u. a. the classics Club Nostalgie , dinner at Pischhorns and being a child in Ohio with Ink Röhr . The CD is now considered a collector's item.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The new Friday evening on FM4 . fm4.ORF.at. September 19, 2014. Retrieved September 23, 2014.
  2. ↑ http://fm4.orf.at/blumenau/192535  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / fm4.orf.at  
  3. ↑ http://fm4.orf.at/connected/190127  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / fm4.orf.at  
  4. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated November 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nadir.org