Fooled by Octopusness

Paul did it again.. and again. The German octopus (though british by birth) correctly predicted all eight German world cup games plus Spain's win in the finale against the Netherlands. Thankfully Paul's keepers at the Oberhausen aquarium rejected all requests for Paul to become a regular TV Psychic. Even better, the clairvoyant cephalopod will not be around to divine the next world cup champion. At two and half years he's pretty close to an octopus' three years life expectancy.

If, however, it had been up to the animals at Chemnitz zoo, the Netherlands would today celebrate the championship. From pygmy hippo Petty to sloth bear Renate (yes sloth bear is an actual species) they all tried to predict the very same matches as Paul, but failed eight out of nine times. Only porcupine Leon got at least Spain's win against Germany right.

If you still plan to have Paul run your hedge fund, please read "Fooled by Randomness" before proceeding.

The Hindenburg flies again - German producers feel the heat

RTL has relaunched the old Zep and hopes it will land them in ratings heaven when the tv-movie Hindenburg airs in spring 2011. Financially they already know it will be closer to hell: "this is a prestige project" said Barbara Thielen, RTL's head of fiction " a commercial broadcaster can never recoup the cost of such an expensive tv-movie." Surely a public subsidy of € 1.8 million was welcome to limit RTL's losses. Incidentally the movie is shot on a soundstage located in the area of Colognes former Ossendorf airport, which opened in 1909 with an actual Zeppelin landing (right).

Producers wish channels would order more loss leader projects. The German movie and TV producers association complains that 46% of its members expect declining revenue, 40% will reduce head-count and a whopping 70% are facing lowball offers from broadcasters.

The reason for the cost squeeze is simple: if lucky German TV advertisement revenue will this year creep back to where it was ten years ago: to around 4.7 billion euros. In 2003 it had fallen as low as € 3.8bn.

One of the few growth opportunities might be international distribution. So far only 10% of German producers revenues are generated outside the fatherland. In the UK 30% of revenues comes from exporting the brainchilds of Ricky Gervais et al.

To help the old Hindenburg make some foreign coin, Italian Greta Scachi, American Stacy Keach and Canadian Lauren Lee Smith have been invited on board and the zeppelin saga is shot in english.

Largest! Ever!! TV Audience!!!

The next all-time TV record is broken: 31.1 million Germans watched their football team getting squashed by Spain. The game was broadcast on ARD, who alternate with # 2 public broadcaster ZDF in showing world-cup matches. While ARD rules in absolute numbers, the audience share was "only" 83.2% , 6% lower than ZDFs record from Wednesdays match against Argentina.

THE KRAKEN WAS RIGHT!

Germanys football team lost 0:1 against Spain, as predicted by Paul the TV-Octopus (see yesterdays blog). Scary - whats next on Pauls menu? World Domination?

At least a bidding war for his services should start and raise his wage from mussels to oysters. Maybe German News TV could have him predict the stock market. Actually the only time newscaster n-tv made money was during the dot-com bubble ten years ago, when slots were filled with ads for the next-big-thing-companies IPOs. n-tv had created a "friendly" editorial environment for such ads by - well, how shall I put it: by not hiring the likes of Paul, who have a grasp of things to come and dare to speak out the inconvenient truth.

So, no, maybe Paul the Octopus is not the one to save German News TV.

iPhone 4G? at Vodafone ?? in Germany ??? WTF ????

You might have heard of the iPhone 4 (unless you live under a rock) and you might have heard it's exclusive to T-mobile in Germany. No need to despair , vodafone fanboys, here comes your iPhone "4G". At least that's what this poster outside the vodafone store at Munich's railway-station (Ostbahnhof) promises. The claim "schärfer... schneller... schlanker" means sharper, faster, slimmer and "jetzt vorbestellen" translates: preorder now! The good man at the store could not tell me when I might hope to put my sticky paws on an actual device. Fair enough - nor could the guy a the T-mobile store, when I ordered my iPhone 4.

OK, iPhones are actually available from German non T-mobile providers for some time now, but so far it had always been the old model - the 3G, now the 3GS - I guess a way for T-Mobile to sell excess inventory. But a brand spanking new 4 (discounting the G as a typo)? Is exclusivity on the way out???

The sorry state of German News Channels

Others might spend on a roost of retired football stars to analyze forthcoming World Championship games. Not German News Channel n-tv: their resident armchair coach seems to be Paul the Octopus. Today n-tv shocked Germany with Paul predicting a loss in Wednesdays semi-finals against Spain. The piece was on heavy rotation all day. Such frugality - Pauls salary seems to be a mollusk - is the hallmark of Germanys ailing news TV business. n-tv used to be a RTL/CNN joint venture, in 2006 RTL took over the americans share. German regulators initially blocked the deal until RTL could prove that absolutely nobody wanted the channel, even if offered for just one single euro. A month ago rival newscaster n24 was cut loose by corporate parent pro7 in a management buyout. Although a price of up to 60 million euros was rumored, the new n24 owners got a nice little dowry - a six year deal delivering news to pro7 group. So we'll never know about the actual valuation of this hot property ( hot as in hot potato ?).

BTW: Paul's predictions proved correct so far... see the master at work below

Highest! Ever!! TV Market Share!!! Football frags fragmentation

ZDF 89.2% : 10.8% for the rest ! Pubcaster ZDF's market share triumph even outshines Germanys 4:0 soccer victory against Argentina. And of course it is precisely thanks to this world championship game that ZDF now holds the all-time market share record in the history of German television.

World Champion ship rights gave both leading pubcasters, ARD and ZDF, a welcome shares lift, especially among younger viewers who usually shun their fare: In June ZDF almost doubled its share among the 14-49 ad target from 5.9% to 11.7% while ARD grew from 7.2% to 12.3% compared to May. And the championship only started on june 11th!

Sure these audience gains are short lived but German pubcasters can count on outbidding commercial rivals for major sports rights in years to come. The public broadcasting system is comfortably funded with ca 9bn € (11bn$) in guaranteed fees per year. All commercial broadcasters combined make about half as much, of course depending on the fickle ad market.

No surprise commercial channel RTL only got the crumbs, i.e.: championship games between countries their viewers would not find on a map.

But wait, that could be a lot of countries. On RTL 2's Big Brother two of the inmates were given the task to pinpoint the 32 countries participating - they misplaced 29 - see below

Real Brüno joins QVC, outshines cubic zirconium

Germanys King of Bling, Harald Glööckler, is moving from local home shopping outfit HSE24 to QVC Germany. A no brainer hire for the good folks at QVC as the man and his fashion are already a hot item at QVC UK. In this parallel universe that cubic zirconium has build, Glööcklers flashy blings, heavy scents and tent-shaped cuts seem to be a perfect fit. With sizes up to 56 his label Pompöös - thats German for pompous - is indeed aiming at the largest addressable audience. 45 years old Glööckler even claims to be the original Brüno, as Sacha Baron Cohen had visited and studied him in Berlin - see article and check out Harald in his beerfest garb.

Besides beeing a "Fashion Designer" and his own TV host, Herr Glööckler (born with a single "ö" only) is also a painter, a philanthropist and generally works hard at being a character.

More pics, vids and glitter at his Homepage and Fan-page, you can also pre-order his biography, if you must.

Lame Jokers send fake Tweets, vote Dumpling for President

So Germany yesterday elected a new President. Why nobody outside Germany took notice? Because the German President is about as powerful as - but far less colorful than- a British Royal. The president is chosen behind closed doors by an electoral college composed of various German Lawmakers plus a splattering of celebrities.

To add some fun to the tedious process satirical magazine Titanic sent out fake Tweets from a fake Twitter account named after German actress Martina Gedeck (from oscar winning movie "The Lives of Others") who was nominated to the electoral college by the Green party. Tweets were about the lousy quality of parliamentary catering and tried to preempt the official announcement of the election results - but guessed wrongly.

Yes - a bit of a lame joke, but keep in mind: Titanic is not any satirical magazine, it's a GERMAN satirical magazine.

And in case you wonder - the bore who eventually got elected president is Christian Wulff, a former state governor from the Conservative party. The German dumpling above is not actually him, though the jolly fellows at Titanic seem to think so.