Cologne broadcaster can continue
World War II bomb defused in front of RTL headquarters
Bomb alarm at RTL: The broadcast center in Cologne-Deutz on the Rhine had to be evacuated in the meantime
© imago/imagebroker
A World War II bomb found near the Cologne RTL broadcasting center has now been defused and operations can resume.
RTL presenter Roberta Bieling (49) received the disturbing news at the beginning of the live broadcast of her magazine “Point 12”: After a 500 kilogram bomb from the Second World War was discovered during dredging work in the nearby Rhine on the morning of Wednesday (April 3rd). was discovered, RTL’s broadcasting center in Cologne-Deutz had to be evacuated under time pressure. The experienced TV woman took it in stride, briefly informed her audience of the surprising inconvenience in a clip (“It’s going to be a somewhat turbulent ‘Point 12’ broadcast today”) and then left the studio with her team.
RTL explains: “We continue to broadcast”
Under the motto “We keep sending!” They quickly moved the TV studio to the terrace of the “Park Café” in Cologne’s nearby Rheinpark and put on an improvised program there. Given the unclear situation, it was not yet possible to predict how the day’s planned broadcasting would continue. In the event that normal operation would still not be possible in the broadcast center by the time the news program “RTL aktuell” began at 6:45 p.m., an emergency plan was developed to have the news format moderated live from Berlin by Jan Hofer (74).
Jan Hofer’s emergency intervention not necessary
According to a report in “Bild”. Hofer’s spontaneous intervention was no longer necessary. After the city of Cologne announced that the bomb had been defused at 4:06 p.m., the RTL staff could finally breathe a sigh of relief and return to work. According to the official all-clear from the authorities, it was a “demanding and unusual operation”.
Presenter Roberta Bieling recorded the exciting evacuation operation in a statement reported by RTL with a good dose of humor: “In our editorial team, everyone always has fun when such special situations happen. Then you notice how everyone, even in the studio, is really giving it their all. That’s why it was clear to me all along that this would happen “Everything works great anyway. And I just like it when things happen differently than usual.”