Peter Kloeppel (65) is ending “RTL Aktuell”. As the presenter announced in a “Stern” interview, he will host his last show in August this year. In the detailed conversation with the magazine, Kloeppel also explains the reasons for his departure. In the future, he wants to spend more time in the USA, his wife’s homeland. He himself impressed people for more than 30 years, primarily because of his calm, matter-of-fact and calm manner as an anchorman. A bit too dull for some, but for many just right for a news anchor. “I never wanted to create rough edges,” Kloeppel explains his style, “why would I want people to offend me?”
Nevertheless, he never relied on everyone to like him: “Everbody’s darling is everybody’s beef.” It is much more important for him to develop his own personality in front of the camera. For him personally, it is important that he is a mediating person. That’s why he doesn’t think the comparison that he’s the Frank-Walter Steinmeier (68) of television is bad at all. That’s why he used to be able to imagine becoming a diplomat: “I don’t have to take out my lance and poke people all the time. It’s not my thing.”
When asked whether he sometimes does something crazy, Kloeppel answers almost cutely: “Sometimes I bake bread. I think that’s crazy because it usually doesn’t work.” He had already jumped with a parachute once and flown in a fighter plane twice, but that was always for the job. In general, he tends to avoid things that would endanger his life: “I’m not a border crosser.” However, Kloeppel openly admits that he would like to express himself more in the television studio. He knows that he isn’t, but still: “Sometimes I would like to be as anarchist as Jan Böhmermann.”
He is impressed when someone pulls out things in world politics that are bizarre or even scandalous – and uses them satirically. Just like Jan Böhmermann (43) in his “ZDF Magazine Royale” or Oliver Welke (57) in the “heute-show”. But, as Kloeppel knows: “It will never happen. That’s not me.” It’s just the moments in which he thinks: “Man, if you were to do something new again, it would be something crazy.”
Incidentally, Kloeppel cannot accept the long-standing accusation that he is just a “serious fig leaf for trash television” for the private broadcaster RTL. Neither the fig leaf nor trash television are appropriate terms. Although programs are also produced that are not part of cultural television, it is “nonsense” that RTL wants to cover up the “terrible things in the program”. He never felt like an exotic person: “RTL, there are a lot of bright, bright colors. I’m just the blue of the RTL news.”
He only watches parts of the jungle camp himself, but always with “amusement”. However, when “snails, cockroaches or kangaroo penises” are eaten, he switches off: “That upsets even my stomach.” For him, the “socio-economic panel” that opens up there is “interesting”.
