Deutschland sucht den Superstar
We have been there yesterday and it was interesting and fun. It’s a show that is actually starting world wide, much like Big Brother, and was mostly called “Superstar” or something similar. Each night, the remaining candidates have to sing a song, live on stage, and then one of them has to go after the end of the show. If I remember correctly, in the UK, each night, there was a cool big band against which they had to sing. Germany isn’t really good in live stuff so they sing against a tape. There was a big band once but sadly only once and it wasn’t really too big.
The biggest problem with the show though is the voting mechanism. At the end of the show you call for whoever you think is best and whoever gets the least calls goes. In general this is wonderful, for the companies running the show, as most money is made this way. 40% or more of each call (costing 0.49 EUR) go to the producer it seems. The more calls, the more money. The problem is though, that this also means that whoever has a big fan base will come through. This is what is currently happening, with not the best people coming through, but those who fit a special target audience, preferably one which is avid to calling an expensive number to let their star win.
This lead to an outrage at the last show when somebody with an amazing voice, somebody many thought should win, needed to leave. This ment that yesterdays show could have become really interesting. We needed to arrive arround 1800 to get our tickets, which we only got via somebody who works at the show. It seems that two tickets were sold on eBay for 351 EURs for yesterdays show. After a free drink, and a second paid one, it was waiting time. They were taking people into the studio in blocks, and we were already thinking we would be sitting on the toilet, when our block was called too. In we go, and the studio is, as always, smaller than we though. We are actually wondering how a big band made it on there last time. After a few minutes of waiting, the warm-up guy comes in and starts to make some (good, really) jokes. Then he introduced one of the co-hosts and they started to try to find out who bought the 351 eBay tickets. They failed. I think I have to cut it short now though, only saying that it was fun and it’s a really good experience to see such a show produced live. But now it’s off to Aachen for brunch with friends.