The Radio Dance Orchestra plays at the beginning of the ZDF Magazine Royale for his life, it must, too, if you take the words of Tom Buhrow in the Hamburg Overseas Club takes seriously. Since the public orchestras and choirs, or their saving, were after all one of the few concrete points of his revolution. Of course, Böhmermann is extremely self-conscious with a broadcast on public broadcasting, but that hasn’t stopped journalists at RBB from doing very good work. In Böhmermann’s hybrid satire and investigative show, the ideal time has now come in the days after Buhrow’s private speech. Obligatory for Böhmermann to state that he is speaking “purely as a private person” and not as a moderator of a ZDF program.
“Today, for a change, it’s not about anything secret,” he begins, “but about something obvious: public broadcasting sucks.” The tone is set, and Böhmermann, who always and repeatedly emphasizes in this show that he is a child of public law, seems credibly touched and increasingly angry as the show progresses.
Böhmermann also has to emphasize that Springer has been working on abolishing public broadcasting for years. Along with the noble goals, distance from the state, pluralism, democracy on which it was once built. But from those, from the guest posts in the World and the AfD in the state parliaments, he will not let his criticism be taken away from him.
So to the anger and the motto of the show, #dontgetmewrong, so to Tom Buhrow. Buhrow, who certainly doesn’t want to be misunderstood in general, but on the other hand doesn’t behave as if that were his top priority, sang on the show Gottschalk live ten years ago enthusiastically played “Don’t get me wrong” by the Pretenders, accompanying himself on guitar. That was courageous – after all, Buhrow was somewhere between the career stages daily topics and WDR directorship, so you shouldn’t make fun of it. in the ZDF Magazine Royale it is still television gold.
As well as this NDR story with the dog medium. You have read them often enough in the past few weeks: In the NDR Hamburg Journal ran a post about a woman who wanted to get in touch with deceased dogs, which raised questions in the wake of the Schlesinger scandal. Because the producer of the dog contribution was the daughter of the NDR culture boss. But seeing the post and contacting the deceased dog Laika is something completely different. Above all, Jens Riewa’s extremely skeptical moderation: “Yes. May Laika just rest in peace.”
Of course, it had nothing to do with corruption or nepotism, that as a journalistic contribution in the Hamburg Journal went through, Böhmermann commented on the entanglements in the NDR in a very Bohemian manner. They have now been refuted several times by the broadcaster, also “on behalf of the totally independent NDR anti-corruption officers,” said Böhmermann. One hand just wash the other paw.
But back to anger. “Secret severance payments in the BR, ridiculously expensive renovations in the WDR, fraudulent hit shit in the MDR,” so the course of events in the ZDF Magazine Royale. How could the idea of public broadcasting become a tangled self-service shop for all of us? And where was Markus Söder, a member of the ZDF board of directors, actually at the many meetings in recent years where he was loud ZDF Magazine Royale did not participate? On September 9th, 2022, for example in a marquee in the Allgäu, there must be so much investigative content in the show.
After all, the problem areas are diverse. The broadcasting councils, for example, are not only outdated – the less than one percent of farmers in the country occupy as many seats there as the 27 percent of people with a migration background in Germany, reports Khola Maryam Hübsch from the HR broadcasting council. Böhmermann summarizes that the public broadcasters reflect German society from the year 1950. Freelancers work for them in precarious conditions, while station bosses abseil down with multimillion-dollar pension entitlements.
It’s only logical, says Böhmermann, that directors who have sat in their massage seats for too long should now go on the defensive instead of abolishing their 1950s privileges. “I can’t take these system maintenance reflexes anymore”. How much money do you have to weigh down an ARD chairman so that he doesn’t fall over at the slightest wind? And by the way, you don’t just have to pick up the spectators, “but please also bring them fucking somewhere”.
Böhmermann takes you somewhere that evening. And if only for the catchy tune “Don’t get me wrong”.