ZAK (Politmagazin)

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Television broadcast
Original title Z A K
Country of production Germany
original language German
Year (s) 1988-1996
genre Politmagazin
Theme music Anne Clark : Our Darkness
idea Rolf Schmidt-Holtz
Moderation
First broadcast January 8, 1988 on West 3

Z A K was a WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) political magazine that was broadcast weekly on German public television from 1988 to 1996 . The name was derived from the editorial group “Zeitgeschehen aktuell”. The concept was developed by the WDR editors Gerd Berger and Ulrich Deppendorf with the help of Peter Bauer, Ernst-Ludwig Freisewinkel and Klaus Werner based on an idea by WDR editor-in-chief Rolf Schmidt-Holtz .

In 1989 Gerd Berger and Désirée Bethge received the Adolf Grimme Silver Prize for this .

history

Z A K was initially only broadcast on the third program, WDR television , on late Friday evening. Until 1994 the broadcast took place on Fridays from 9.45 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. and from 1996 on Sundays from 10.30 p.m. to 11 p.m. In 1993 it was broadcast nationwide in the first . The theme music was the song Our Darkness by Anne Clark . In 1989, the editor-in-chief Gerd Berger, the presenter Désirée Bethge and four other employees were poached from the RTL television magazine stern TV .

In 1996 the program was discontinued in favor of the ARD program Privatfernsehen , which was also moderated by Küppersbusch. But even this extended broadcast format - there was a small studio audience here - was discontinued after a short time.

Due to its biting, satirical character, the show was popular mainly in left-wing intellectual circles. In the conservative spectrum, the show was referred to as the “left magazine” due to its one-sided reporting. First the show was moderated by Désirée Bethge , in whose footsteps Friedrich Küppersbusch then followed. The exchange of blows with the former parliamentary group and party chairman of the SPD, Hans-Jochen Vogel, became known : Right at the beginning of the broadcast, a heated argument developed that lasted the entire broadcasting time and all the contributions and which - according to Friedrich Küppersbusch - continued well into the Night after the broadcast was resumed. "And the next time you invite me back, I'll come and then we'll knock each other out again," Vogel's closing words should have been that evening.

The short interviews with Wolfgang Korruhn , who himself had contributed to the concept of the program, were also an integral part of ZAK . In his interviews, Korruhn got very close physically to his interviewees and was known for this as well as for his way of asking questions. A conversation with the then Fulda Archbishop Johannes Dyba , whom Korruhn involved in a discussion about homosexuality, and an interview with the FDP politician Irmgard Schwaetzer , who broke off the interview in front of the camera, became particularly famous.

Küppersbusch's introductions for the articles in ZAK are in the book Up to this point, Thank you very much. Presentations from ZAK (Konkret Literatur Verlag, 1995) and on the CD Küppersbusch (Universal, 1997) published.

Audience ratings

Until 1993, the audience was 5 percent in the broadcast area and then rose to 10 percent market share with around 2.5 million viewers. From 1996 the audience rating fell to 4 percent with around one million viewers.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tough fight: Küppersbusch and Vogel on YouTube .

Web links