“Super Letter D”
“Tagesschau”: Funny glitch when announcing the lottery numbers on Saturday
“Tagesschau” spokesman Thorsten Schröder
© Scheffen, Henning / Action Press
Mistakes are a real rarity in the “Tagesschau”. That’s also why many viewers are amused by a cute blunder by Thorsten Schröder that happened when the lottery numbers were read out.
Normally there are no glitches with the “Tagesschau”. Professionals work around the news program, making sure that Germans get a carefully compiled overview of the most important events every day – hard work is done in front of and behind the camera. So it’s all the more refreshing to see that even the otherwise serious newscasters sometimes make a small mistake. If it’s still as amusing as it was last Saturday, then of course it quickly provides amusement.
It happened when the lottery numbers that were drawn on Saturday night were announced. Everyone knows the ritual: the six digits plus the super number are displayed on the screen “as always without guarantee” and read aloud by the moderator. That’s how it went this time – until spokesman Thorsten Schröder came to the super number and had probably looked at the numbers a touch too briefly. “Super number: D,” he read out. D? Well, actually it’s still a letter, not a number! Schröder quickly noticed that too: “No, zero of course!” He quickly corrected himself.
“Tagesschau” invents the “super letter”
But by then the blunder had already happened and many a viewer might have giggled in front of the television. There were also various lovingly mocking comments on the “super letter D” on the Internet. The slip of the tongue should not have caused any real damage: all the eagerly awaiting lottery players saw the correct numbers on the television screen, and nowadays these can also be found elsewhere. At the latest at the lottery kiosk, a possible lucky guy would have found out whether he has become a millionaire or not.
And the Tagesschau itself took the blunder with humor and made fun of itself on Twitter:
“Due to the occasion …”, wrote the “Tagesschau” editors there with a wink and added a video of the “lottery letter announcement”, in which Thorsten Schröder only read letters. Except for the “super letter” – it’s just a stupid zero here.
Sources: Twitter, “Daily News”