Last weekend, Thomas Gottschalk invited to a new edition of “Wetten, dass..?”. The moderator obviously doesn’t care that the show was not well received by everyone. “There is no reason to justify yourself,” writes Gottschalk in the “Bild” newspaper. The format “always follows the same pattern”: “Many people are happy about it and the rate is higher than elsewhere.”
He also explains the criticism of the sound that came from the moderator’s microphone to the “Bild” newspaper. Gottschalk says: “It’s constantly hissing on social media and I can reassure the few frightened Twitterers who were worried that I was suddenly lisping: It was a technical problem with the sound.”
In fact, the show had good ratings. According to AGF Videoforschung and GfK, a total of 10.087 million viewers tuned in – a great market share of 39.5 percent. In the target group between 14 and 49 years, it was even 43.7 percent with 2.645 million people. At the same time, this also meant a significant decline compared to Gottschalk’s first “Wetten, dass…?” return in November 2021. At that time, 14.46 million people looked in, a share of 45.9 percent.
If it were up to a few “disgruntled journalists”, “I would have said goodbye to my job in tears thirty years ago,” writes Gottschalk now. There was also some criticism on social media, for example from Oliver Kalkofe, who has been skillfully satirizing German TV content for many years. “The fact that the show was bad today has nothing to do with Gottschalk’s age,” wrote the actor, moderator and satirist on Twitter. “He’s still great when he’s in a good mood.” Instead, the responsible ZDF editors confused “nostalgia with standstill” and “retro feeling with repetition”.
