Since May, 26th, we have a new program in German Television: The “heute show” on the ZDF. A kind of Late-night-show in which current happenings in national television are parodied or commented in a funny way. Sounds familiar to you? In English “heute show” means “Today Show”. The name seems to be close to “Daily Show” but it isn’t: On the ZDF all news-related programs are labeled with the “heute”-brand (“heute journal”, “heute nacht”, etc… also, the “heute show” isn’t broadcasted daily, but monthly). Yet the format itself seems to be!

Unfortunately the copy wasn’t really successful: They forgot to copy the “Daily Show“’s quality! It is so totally unfunny and quite dumb! Instead of intelligent, creative, ironic remarks on the absurdity in politics and the media (especially FOX News) they have lame, pseudo-funny lines… come hell or high water. I know that it’s hard to reach the level of Jon Stewart, but this host can’t stand a comparison to him. Yet, I know that it’s also more difficult to create a kind of “Daily Show” in Germany than it is in the USA and the Nazis plays a role indirectly:

heute-show, Oliver Welke, ZDF

After the end of WWII in 1945 the nazi-ideology was still in the minds of many people. The post-war generation however, who were children or not even born when the war took place, learned about the cruelty of the nazi-period and revolted against lecturers, politicians or even their own parents if they had been supporters of the nazi-regime. Since then, since 1968, Germany is getting more and more leftish. Today we have three big left-wingish parties (one at least claims to be leftish) versus one conservative, yet not ultra conservative party. The media is usually non-political, but in case, they’re rather given to the left-wing than to the right-wing. And I’m not talking about one or two channels or newspapers – I mean the German media landscape in general. The German politics are mostly “de-emotionalized” (although now, in the times of Barack Obama, the politicians try desperatly to mobilize the voters and getting their favor by struggling to be rhetorical eloquent and emotionally expressive… of course they fail just as desperatly)…

To put it in a nutshell (is this really the correct idiom?! The dictionary says that..!): We neither have Republicans nor FOX News! We don’t have the Southern States or the “Bible Belt“. We do have absurdity in our politics (the latest example: The introduction of a censorship on the internet with the strange pretense to help children with it… I should blog about this topic, too!), yet not as often and not as prominent as in the USA. We don’t have Gretchen Carlson, Bill O’Reilly or other… let’s call them “simple-minded persons” on television. (uh… No, I think “idiots” is the more appropriate term..!)

So, this wonderful basis for a show like “The Daily Show” is somehow missing in Germany. There were already thoughts in the German Blogosphere about how a German “Daily Show” could be like. One blogger meant that there isn’t enough stuff to fill a daily show with, but maybe it is enough to fill a weekly one. Yet I fancy the idea to create a European “Daily Show”:

Between June 4th – 7th Europe elected the European Parliament. The voter turnout was very low – as it was expected. Because here in Germany you don’t notice that you’re living in a union of states. The European Union seems to be far away. You don’t realize what’s going on in the other European countries. And – according to the post-election-coverage – this is not a German-only issue, but a European one! I believe that this problem is strongly associated with the disenchantment with politics: The European Union is an economic and political union. But as the citizens aren’t really interested in politics and the economy, they are also not interested in this union! The media matters more than ever – especially TV – but you won’t find anything Europe-related on TV (apart from the news, but people are also not interested in the news… except for gossipy news). You’ll find a lot of USA-related stuff on TV! All these American series, movies, singers and bands, coming along with the gossip news about them. To draw a weird conclusion: Europeans are more likely to call themselves “Americans” than “Europeans”! (This sentence is nonsense, but you get the idea)

So, a program which is referred to European topics (rather than to American ones or to topics of a single European nation) would support a European spirit and would probably have enough material to base on. And I think there are probably more righties in the other European countries than there are here in Germany – and maybe there’s even some kind of European “FOX News” somewhere – who knows!

Anyway. The “heute-show” is bad. That has been the actual topic of this post! Although the producers of the show say that “The Daily Show” wasn’t the only orientation: Rudis Tagesshow (there’s no English version of this wikipedia-article available – read the article about “Die Wochenschau“, Rudis Tagesshow is mentioned there) was also one. And “Rudis Tagesshow” is indeed similar to the “heute-show”… But I think this format is outdated since the nineties when “Die Wochenshau” picked it up and broadcasted it until its ratings were going down!

So (the post is already quite long, I have to come to an end!), there’s still not a good German “Daily Show” and I wished there would be a European one.