Endemol

Endemol Shine is an international television production and development company based in the Netherlands. It is the second largest television producer in the world after the RTL Group belonging FremantleMedia group. In the international arena, the company has been operating on the YouTube video portal as a multi-channel network since February 29, 2008 . A German-speaking multi-channel network was also opened on February 3, 2014.

On July 1, 2020, the European Competition Commission approved the acquisition by Banijay Entertainment for $ 2.2 billion.

structure

Endemol was created through the merger of the production companies Van den Ende Produkties BV owned by Dutchman Joop van den Ende and De Mol Produkties BV owned by John de Mol , the brother of television presenter Linda de Mol .

The company, which operates in the entertainment and fiction sector, is headquartered in Duivendrecht near Amsterdam in the Netherlands . Due to the worldwide success of the Big Brother format , Endemol is represented almost worldwide by self-founded or acquired companies, including in Germany, the USA and Australia. In 2000, the company was sold to the Spanish telecommunications and media group Telefónica for Telefónica shares worth 5.5 billion euros .

Soon thereafter, stock market valuations for media companies collapsed. After depreciation, Endemol was finally only 840 million euros on the books at Telefónica. In 2005, César Alierta floated a quarter of the company. But the placement was disappointing and investors rated Endemol at 1.1 billion euros when it was first listed. In 2007 Endemol was taken off the stock exchange. A consortium of Goldman Sachs , Mediacinco and Cyrte became the new owner . The Mediaset broadcasting group of Italian ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi , which got on board in 2007, parted with its Endemol shares again in 2012.

Endemol Deutschland GmbH is based in the Coloneum studio complex in the northern part of Cologne-Ossendorf . Endemol Germany has also had its own location in Munich since mid-2009. As an independent production company, it produces for many German-speaking television stations; The main buyers of the productions are currently ZDF , RTL , Sat.1 , Pro7 , Kabel eins , RTL II and ORF . Borris Brandt , the son of actor Volker Brandt , was the managing director until the end of September 2008 . Marcus Wolter has been the new managing director since October 1st, 2008 .

Endemol Germany held 90 percent of the shares in META productions - a member of the Endemol Group, which among other things produced the infotainment formats AKTE and Escher - der MDR-Ratgeber . On January 1, 2010, Endemol Germany founded the Wiedemann & Berg Television GmbH & Co. KG joint venture for the fiction sector with the Oscar-winning producers Max Wiedemann and Quirin Berg ( The Lives of Others , Men's Hearts ). In addition, Endemol Germany has a 51 percent stake in Jörg Pilawa's production company , Mr. P GmbH.

Another Endemol Germany subsidiary is Endemol beyond GmbH, which produces web videos for YouTube , for example . Under the direction of the German managing director Georg Ramme, Endemol beyond is now internationally active, producing its own content (in Germany e.g. the YouTube channels “ShortCuts”, “Survival Guide” and “Legends of Gaming Germany” or the advice format “Mom's Diary “For Yahoo as well as the TV show Yps - Die Sendung for RTL Nitro ), evaluates Endemol formats on the Internet (e.g. Die Wache or Stadtklinik ) and acts as a multi-channel network for artists such as Doctor Allwissend , Mr. Bergmann or SceneTakeTV .

Successful broadcasts

The well-known formats include: Big Brother , Only Love Counts , produced under license and moderated by Günther Jauch , Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? , Save the Million! , Stars at work , 17 yards and missing .

The basis for the strong positioning on the German television market were the 1990s, in which Endemol produced the then successful Saturday evening shows of RTL plus (later RTL) with a so-called "output deal"; this included entertainment shows such as Dream Wedding , Mini Playback Show , Soldiers of Fortune , The 100,000 Mark Show and How Please ?! . Fictional formats such as Stadtklinik or Die Wache also secured Endemol one of the leading positions in the production of television series.

The donor show

At the end of May 2007, Endemol came under fire in the Netherlands when the production company announced that it would broadcast a game show called De Grote Donorshow (German: The Great Donor Show ), in which the main prize was a human kidney as a donor organ. Three candidates campaigned for the kidney of a terminally ill 36-year-old. Then the audience was allowed to decide who should receive the kidney via SMS . This concept has been criticized by many as unethical.

However, it turned out that the broadcast was not authentic. The supposedly terminally ill donor was an actress. At the end of the broadcast, the presenter announced the deception.

The show has certainly achieved two things - apart from the advertising success for Endemol:

She has drawn attention to the hot topic of organ donation .
She has once again examined the medium critically and demonstrated the manipulability of the public through radio and television, similar to Wolfgang Menge's 1970's Das Millionenspiel , or the classic of this genre, The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles in 1938.

Callactive

Recently, the German Endemol subsidiary Callactive was increasingly criticized.

This involves non-transparent processes in the context of the call-in competitions that it produces , which are broadcast on the VIVA , Nick and Comedy Central channels, for example , and which raise suspicion of irregularities. In this context, the company is increasingly taking legal action against Internet posts. This caused a storm of indignation in the German-speaking part of the blogosphere . In May 2008 Callactive took over without the knowledge of the operator's domain by LfM recommended critical Internet forum call-in-tv.de which forwarded the meantime on the official website of Callactive while since the forum under call-in-tv.net reach was.

On April 18, 2010, however, the call-in-tv.net page was also transferred to a producer of competition programs, so that the original “call-in-tv” forum no longer existed. This can now be reached at citv.nl.

Callactive also has the term “call-in-tv” in connection with the “forum colors” green and white protected as a trademark.

At the beginning of April 2008 it became known that Endemol had parted ways with Callactive without giving any public reason. In June of the same year Callactive withdrew from the TV production of corresponding call-in formats. The program Money Express was from then on produced by the Telekom Austria subsidiary mass response GmbH . On October 1, 2008, the program Money Express was discontinued.

Multi-channel network

In the international arena, the company has been operating on the YouTube video portal since February 29, 2008 as a multi-channel network . A German-speaking multi-channel network was also opened on February 3, 2014 . Both were discontinued on July 31, 2016.