What did Stefan Raab suggest? Over Easter, the entertainer surprisingly returned to Instagram after nine years of radio silence and announced another boxing match with Regina Halmich. But is that really all there is to it? The industry service “dwdl.de” reports: No, Raab is planning a big ESC comeback. He and his team have already appeared on ARD, ZDF, RTL and Pro7/Sat.1 and presented his idea: a revolution in the German preliminary round, broadcast on four TV channels.
Similar to the Scandinavian countries, the audience should identify more with the German act. It is still completely unclear whether the whole thing will become a reality. But one thing is certain: Raab has a knack for the ESC. He has proven this several times. It all started in 1998.
Raab was still at Viva at the time and advertised extensively for the preliminary decision participant Guildo Horn. A real media hype broke out around the slightly bizarre pop singer with a penchant for nuts. Traditional pop fans found him impossible, the younger generation celebrated his nonconformity. It only became known shortly beforehand that the song “Guildo has you love'”, with which Horn ended up in seventh place at the ESC, was written by Raab.
He published it under the pseudonym “Alf Igel” – and thus took a swipe at the composer Ralph Siegel, who is responsible for numerous German ESC contributions. The media hype paid off for the broadcaster NDR: audience interest skyrocketed and viewer numbers doubled. The ESC, then still the Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson, had suddenly won a new, young audience in Germany.
Stefan Raab was already on the ESC stage himself
In 2000, Raab took the helm himself: with the disco song “Wadde hadde dudde da?” He secured 57 percent of the vote in the preliminary round. But the nonsense song with rap verses and a bridge sung in English was actually well received by international audiences. The flashy appearance in gold and glitter earned him fifth place at the ESC. A huge success. Incidentally, Raab came up with the silly song line while walking the dog: There he met a dog owner who leaned down to her animal and said “Wadde hadde dudde da?” something indefinable in its mouth.
Raab’s next ESC idea: his own casting show for participation in the preliminary round. At “TV Total” he launched “Stefan sucht den Super Grand Prix Star” – or SSDSGPS for short. The then unknown singer Max Mutzke won the show and shot to number one in the charts with the song “Can’t wait until tonight”. His choice in the preliminary round was almost just a formality. In 2004 he competed for Germany at the ESC – and came in 8th place. Raab’s casting show “SSDSGPS” was awarded the Grimme Prize.
Everyone probably knows the highlight of Raab’s ESC ambitions: In 2010, Germany won the ESC for the first time in 28 years and for the second time ever. Stefan Raab had previously managed to arrange a cooperation between his house broadcaster Pro7 and ARD. The result was the format “Our Star for Oslo”, a casting show that looked for the German ESC entry via audience vote over several evenings on both channels. In the end, Lena Meyer-Landrut won, who then won with the hit “Satellite”.
The whole thing is similar to Raab’s alleged new proposal, but it seems even more ambitious with four broadcasters involved. Raab’s triumph culminated in the ESC in Germany: at the major event in Düsseldorf in 2011, he not only stood on stage together with last year’s winner Lena Meyer-Landrut, but also moderated the spectacle together with Anke Engelke and Judith Rakers. Thanks to Lena’s victory, he had freedom from fools, decided in advance that she would compete again and only let the audience vote on the title in “Our Song for Germany”. “Taken by a Stranger” still made it to number 10.
In 2012, a cross-channel format was again successful: “Our Star for Baku” featured the singer Roman Lob, who came in eighth place at the ESC with his song “Standing Still”. The following year, NDR hosted the casting show on its own again, but commissioned the whole thing from the production company Brainpool TV, in which Raab was involved. Brainpool continued to be involved in the preliminary rounds in the coming years.
Raab has now sold his shares. And now he obviously wants to know it again with a new company and even greater ambition. After Germany has repeatedly landed in the last places in recent years, the ESC could do with a good dose of Raab. Because one thing is certain: Hardly anyone loves the ESC as much as Stefan Raab.