Sabine Christiansen (TV show)

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Television broadcast
Original title Sabine Christiansen
Sabine Christiansen Logo.svg
Country of production GermanyGermany Germany
Year (s) 1998-2007
Production
company
TV21 GmbH
length 60 minutes
Episodes 447
Broadcasting
cycle
weekly (Sunday)
genre Political talk show
Theme music Pick Up the Pieces from The Average White Band
production Michael Heiks
Wolfgang Klein
Jan Schulte-Kellinghaus
Moderation Sabine Christiansen
First broadcast January 4, 1998 on Das Erste

Sabine Christiansen was a political talk show on the First German Television (ARD). The moderator was Sabine Christiansen .

The program was first broadcast on January 4, 1998 and ran until June 24, 2007 on Sundays at 9:45 p.m. From September 1st, 2002 the show was produced by Sabine Christiansen's company TV21 GmbH. A total of 447 episodes were produced. The format developed into the most famous talk show on German television at the time. The annual costs for the ARD were around ten million euros, which corresponds to around 200,000 euros per broadcast.

Concept of broadcast

During the one-hour broadcast, the invited guests from politics and business expressed their opinion on the topic of the program and discussed with each other under the direction of the presenter. The selection of the weekly changing topic was essentially based on the current political debate in the media; mostly the topic was formulated as a question. After the broadcast, speeches by individual guests as well as argumentative disputes conducted in the roundtable were recorded by many German-speaking media and further spread. The presenter Christiansen was ascribed a greater influence in the media than some MPs, at the same time, her program was criticized , in part on behalf of the increasing tabloidization of reporting.

The program was assigned to the entertainment department within the ARD instead of the ARD coordinator responsible for politics. In the course of the discussion about the successor to presenters in January 2007, the then SWR director Peter Voss criticized this with the words: “I have always thought it absurd to include 'Sabine Christiansen' in the conversation. The broadcast was thus withdrawn from the professional criticism of the ARD editors-in-chief. "

The program was broadcast live from the Globe City Studio , a spherical single studio on Berlin's Breitscheidplatz . The "Panorama Berlin" was built in 1989 as a 360-degree cinema, later served as a disco and in 1997 it was converted into a television studio. 95 viewers were able to watch the program on an area of ​​around 280 square meters. In the Globe City Studio, individual Hart shows are also produced in a fair manner .

history

Interview with George W. Bush

In May 2006 Sabine Christiansen conducted the first interview with the US President George W. Bush on German television. It was also the longest interview that Bush ever granted a foreign broadcaster.

Garry Kasparov

In 2006, the former world chess champion and Russian regime critic Garry Kasparov was briefly removed from the show. The WDR journalist and long-time Russia correspondent Klaus Bednarz was also unloaded . As a reason for Kasparov's non-participation, the editors cited “technical problems” that would have prevented a switch to Moscow. Bednarz and Jürgen Roth , another guest on the show, claimed, however, that employees from Christiansen's team named political pressure as the real reason in a personal conversation. The Russian ambassador, who took part in the program, had declined Kasparov's invitation. Günter Nooke , the federal government's human rights commissioner, criticized the guest selection.

End of shipment

On June 23, 2006, the presenter announced that she would end the program in the summer of 2007. Günther Jauch , originally planned for a follow-up broadcast on the same slot, canceled after several months of negotiations due to excessive demands by ARD for journalistic exclusivity. The directors of the state broadcasting corporations then agreed to include a follow-up program with Anne Will in the program from September 2007 .

On June 24, 2007 the last broadcast was broadcast. Federal President Horst Köhler was invited as a guest . The political scientist Jürgen W. Falter , who had been a guest on the show several times, was invited to the reception after the last broadcast after he had previously expressed himself critically about the quality of the content.

Conceptual criticism

Control of topic definition and guest selection

In 2006 the non-governmental organization Lobbycontrol, supported by the movement foundation, presented a critical study on the program. The study comes to the conclusion that Christiansen - among other things through the choice of the participants in the discussion - is pursuing a “ neoliberal reform discourse” in which company-oriented and market-liberal positions predominate. The authors cite four problem areas:

  1. Elitist and one-sided spectrum of guests: "The one-sided invitation policy excludes a large group from articulating their point of view and interests."
  2. One-sided range of topics: The welfare state is portrayed as a threat in the program titles, for example in "Milk cow welfare state - are we a people of rip-offs?" Or "Poor through work, rich through Hartz IV ?". The raising of the retirement age and the increase in VAT were not discussed in 2006, however.
  3. Neoliberal reform discourse.
  4. Lack of transparency: “The priority for neoliberal positions is hidden by presenting their representatives as neutral and factual 'experts'. Critical positions, on the other hand, are categorized ideologically as a precaution. "For example, the long-time CDU employee and non-economist Meinhard Miegel was introduced as an" independent pension expert ", but the economist Rudolf Hickel as a" leftist economist ".

The author of the study, Ulrich Müller, comes to the conclusion that in the study period from January 2005 to June 2006 business associations and entrepreneurs with 50 representatives appeared in the program, while trade unions were represented by only 16 and social associations by three representatives. Citizens' initiatives and consumer organizations only had their say as "marginal guests". Out of ten economists invited, nine are neoliberal; the study calculates this for B. Professors Meinhard Miegel , Hans-Werner Sinn , Bernd Raffelhüschen and Paul Kirchhof . In contrast, prominent “left” economists such as B. Peter Bofinger or Gustav Horn were never invited. From the point of view of the study, an additional complication is that many guests of the show are connected to the New Social Market Economy initiative financed by the employers' association Gesamtmetall .

Michael Heiks, producer at Sabine Christiansen's company TV 21 GmbH, explained the criticism expressed in the study that it was not enough to “count the legs of a fly”. The list of economists reflects how the most important economics chairs at universities are filled and which concepts dominate there. The weekly newspaper Die Zeit noted that Heiks could not convincingly justify why the federal government's poverty report or the increase in the retirement age were not discussed in the program. In an interview, Heiks pointed out that during the period in question his editorial team had consciously tried to “set topics differently than in the reform debates a year ago”. Ulrich van Suntum , an economist who works for the Bertelsmann Foundation and the employer-related initiative and criticized in the lobby control study, comes to a view contrary to the lobby control study and complains that there is too little "economic expertise" in the program had come into play and the reform proposals he advocated were not adequately presented.

In retrospect, the publicist Frank Schirrmacher described Christiansen's talk show in 2011 as “the most influential show” that contributed to the implementation of neoliberal politics. Regarding Christiansen's role, he explained: “She herself was quite clearly a party”, and pointed out that “always the same guests” were invited to the show. Schirrmacher described two events in the program as a “ turning point ” in German media history: on the one hand, the fact that Federal President Horst Köhler in the 100th program “subordinated the entire history of this program” by locating historical events along the program numbers; on the other hand, the statement of the CDU politician Friedrich Merz concerning the broadcast that it was “more important than the speeches in the German Bundestag. Opinion maker. ”In summary, Schirrmacher stated:“ If you are z. If, for example, you watch such a program and also add that the moderator is also paid by the public service system, you always have to ask yourself who is actually not paid by the state there, by those who talk there. Usually only officials or lobbyists remain. Exactly. That is a very strange distortion of reality. "

Even Walter van Rossum began in 2004 in his publication My nights with Sabine Christiansen critical of the talk show apart: "In the transmission area of the German combat zone there should be no political talk show that through enough in a similar manner the wishes of the executive suite to the people - and an unbeatable shows journalistic naivety. ”The program merely portrays a contentious democracy. The leitmotif here is always to show Germany in danger first and then to save it. There is actually no discussion: the “Germany Rescue Team”, the executive suite from politics, business, lobby and consultants “decreed their ten-year plans”. Sabine Christiansen, the assiduous chief secretary of the Juste-milieu , functions as “a sound track in an endless loop with the same characters who just have different names”. Almost every broadcast is an "organ-toed high mass for the God of growth". “It's like this: if 'the' economy is doing well, then 'us' is doing well. Unfortunately, the economy is not doing well. And that's the fault of the rest of society. There is only one salvation: growth, economic growth, for which workers and unemployed alike get a little less, but have to do more. "

Low proportion of women

In 1999, Sabine Christiansen was presented with the media prize of the Saure Gurke media women's meeting because of the low proportion of women among her guests .

Reviews

“[…] The worldview that Sabine Christiansen is babbling together is not exactly new, and it is by no means exclusive. But in the broadcasting area of ​​the German combat zone, there shouldn't be a political talk show that transmits the wishes of the executive floor to the people in a similar way - and shows an unbeatable journalistic naivety. [...] "

- Walter van Rossum : My Sundays with ›Sabine Christiansen‹. How the palaver rules us.

“[...] Your talk show has changed the republic. It has shaped a neoliberal discourse that has become the noise of the republic. […] The peculiarity of the show was and is that Sabine Christiansen, as a thoroughly apolitical person with her lack of interest in knowledge, fit perfectly with the media-fixated years of the red-green coalition […] A hatch - that is a fitting picture with Christiansen as the one Saloon lady, countless management consultants whose names we rightly never remembered as waiters, union representatives as dishwashers, Professor Jürgen Falter from Mainz as a gastro critic who gives his mustard to every sausage, Klaus Wowereit as entertainer for the party afterwards - and in the study with cigars and cognac Guido Westerwelle . Now and then there is a distinguished visit from the Chancellor in individual audiences. […] All of you have conjured […] Sunday after Sunday the abyss before which the country would stand if it did not reform itself from the ground up, face globalization and surrender to the laws of the market. Although we never got to do with the Freiburg School here - the grave of the social market economy was rather dug - but with the Chicago Boys . The market will take care of it, the state will take care of the chaos. [...] It's nice that we talked about it. "

- faz.net to the last broadcast

"[...] where else, if not at Christiansen, could the register of a talk show be drawn so wonderfully for self-assurance of one's own importance. Talk, don't let talk - that was the motto of the alpha men and women in the Berlin broadcasting dome. [...] Christiansen helped the political entertainment show, Politainment, to break through, no question about it. It had to happen in media democracy. The same goes for the flattening of the political discussion and the production of good-sounding, but meaningless sound bits from the appointed mouth. [...] Whether 'Dominatrix in the political arena' or 'cue for the powerful', whether ' People's Court of Insanity' or ' Sendung mit der Maus ' - Christiansen has challenged cynicism and malice from the start. Reaming, uncovering, countering - these were not their tactics. [...] The presenter will not go down in history as a great educator, that's for sure. But it is also true: she gave her guests the opportunity to unmask themselves. This side effect, which is underestimated by many critics, shows a strength of television. [...] "

- Wirtschaftswoche's portal to the last broadcast

"It is over. A jolt goes through Germany. [...] The fact that “Sabine Christiansen” was able to survive almost ten years and 447 programs was not only due to her button in her ear (with instructions from the director), which largely replaced the inspiration, but also to the ingenious transmission slot, which was the lack of intellectual Structurally balanced presence. Sabine Christiansen would have gone down mercilessly on Maybrit Illner's Thursday evening appointment. [...] As if she wanted to show off again what she really couldn't do, Sabine Christiansen invited Federal President Horst Köhler as the only guest last night . A real coup. Because in this way the boredom and the phrasing increased to an extent that was hardly thought possible. [...] One last smile from the permanently scratched talk diva in a white pants suit: 'Thank you very much for your loyalty', a big bouquet of flowers and Horst Koehler's true last words: 'You made television history.' The more time passed, the more people would one day say: 'Oh, Ms. Christiansen ...' Dear Federal President, we are already saying that today. "

- Spiegel Online to the last broadcast

“[…] Once again, one last time, Sabine Christiansen prepared a stage for the Berlin Republic. Once again it was the spider in the capital's web, it offered a web for the slogan leaders of the trade. […] Geier's nosedive: Sabine Christiansen was a final greeting from the New Economy […] Over time, the odds in this night's round of the republic also crumbled. The inclined viewer simply no longer [...] wanted to stay with the same program and give the art of repetition and the reproduction of the banal further opportunities. Even the greatest of the great directors of ARD had an understanding of amateur play - especially since they believed they had the perfect successor in Günther Jauch . Because the man from private television then canceled, Anne Will will take over the talk show on September 16. [...] After all these years with her, after all that Sunday soap, you can't tell her often enough: 'Oh, Ms. Christiansen!' "

- sueddeutsche.de to the last broadcast

Prices

  • 1999 Saure Gurke (media prize of the media women meeting)

literature

  • Walter van Rossum: My Sundays with ›Sabine Christiansen‹. How the palaver rules us . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2004, ISBN 978-3-462-03394-6 .
  • Ulrich Müller, Heidi Klein: Schaubühne for the influential and opinion makers - the neoliberal reform discourse in 'Sabine Christiansen' . Lobbycontrol, 2006, lobbycontrol.de (PDF; 547 kB). Study period: January 2005 to June 2006.
  • Steffen Eisentraut: Political talk as a form of democratic public? “Sabine Christiansen” and “Hard but fair” in comparison . Tectum-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8288-9490-7 .
  • Angelika Hein: Communication in a talk show - using the case study of the program: “Sabine Christiansen” . GRIN Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-638-79186-6 .
  • How an apolitical policy made . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , February 10, 2007.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Sabine Christiansen - How an apolitical policy made. Retrieved September 21, 2009 .
  2. When politics still ruled in black and white . suedkurier.de
  3. Peter Voss : The open letter to Günther Jauch in full . In: Die Welt , January 15, 2007
  4. Michael Hanfeld, Kerstin Holm: Wouldn't that have been for “Christiansen”? In: FAZ , December 14, 2006
  5. Carolin Jenkner: Christiansen's farewell reception - critical professor was unloaded In: Spiegel Online , June 25, 2007
  6. Our financing . lobbycontrol.de
  7. Harald Neuber: Club of anonymous opinion makers . Telepolis , September 9, 2006
  8. a b Ulrich Müller, Heidi Klein: Schaubühne for the influential and opinion makers. The neoliberal reform discourse in “Sabine Christiansen” .
  9. Nothing better than a reformer study accuses ARD talk show “Sabine Christiansen” of one-sided selection of guests and topics . taz.de, September 8, 2006
  10. a b c One-sided Christiansen? In: Zeit online , September 7, 2006
  11. ^ Ulrich van Suntum : Masterplan Germany . ISBN 3-423-50901-5
  12. a b Transcript of an interview for the program “Alternativlos”, episode 20 from October 23, 2011 (minutes 25:00 to 30:00) alternativlos.org , accessed on October 25, 2011.
  13. ^ TV Hochamt: How Sabine Christiansen shows us a contentious democracy. In: Spiegel Online . June 13, 2004, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  14. The winners of the 1999 pickle
  15. Unbeatably inexperienced. Retrieved September 21, 2009 .
  16. Sabine Christiansen - How an apolitical policy made. Retrieved September 21, 2009 .
  17. Last broadcast “Sabine Christiansen” - arm wrestling in front of millions. Retrieved September 21, 2009 .
  18. Christiansen Finale - Abyss is always. Retrieved September 21, 2009 .
  19. ARD: Talk farewell with president "Oh, the woman Christiansen" Accessed 21 September 2009 .