Joachim Llambi has been a judge on the RTL dance show Let’s Dance since 2006. He also judges professional and amateur dancesport. In 2014 he published a book subtitled Mut zur ehrlichen Kritik, courage for honest criticism. In 2025 he said: “Ich will bei ‹Let’s Dance› stets ein ehrliches, klares Urteil geben.” I always want to give an honest, clear verdict on Let’s Dance. It annoys him, he added, when criticism becomes insulting for no reason. He looks at timing, footwork, body lines and the work with the partner. “Wir bewerten das, was wir sehen”, he said. We judge what we see.
television
The Yodeling Diploma
In a sketch by Loriot, first broadcast on 7 December 1978, Frau Hoppenstedt attends a yodeling school. She wants her yodeling diploma so that she has was Eigenes, something of her own. The word Jodeldiplom entered the language, and the dictionary DWDS lists it. It is used for a superfluous or worthless qualification. Die Zeit wrote in 2006: “Das ist jetzt, ohne Drachen im Land, kaum mehr wert als ein Jodeldiplom.” Now, with no dragons in the land, that is hardly worth more than a yodeling diploma.
The Stone Louse in the Medical Dictionary
On 18 October 1976 Loriot presented the Steinlaus, the stone louse, on television, in a parody of the zoologist and television presenter Bernhard Grzimek. The adult male, he explained, needs about 28 kilograms of concrete and bricks a day. In 1983 the Pschyrembel, the standard German clinical dictionary, added an entry on the stone louse in its 255th edition. The entry was removed in the 257th edition in 1994. After unexpectedly strong protests from readers, it returned in the next edition in 1997.
The Greatest Germans
In 2003 the public broadcaster ZDF asked viewers to choose the greatest German in a series called Unsere Besten, Our Best. The result was broadcast on 28 November 2003. The top ten were Konrad Adenauer, Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Sophie and Hans Scholl, Willy Brandt, Johann Sebastian Bach, Goethe, Johannes Gutenberg, Otto von Bismarck and Albert Einstein. In the list of results, Gutenberg, in eighth place, appears as the Erfinder des Mobilletterndrucks, the inventor of printing with movable type. German Wikipedia is more precise. It says Gutenberg is considered the inventor of modern printing with movable metal type and of the printing press. Around 1040 a Chinese smith, Bi Sheng, had already made movable type from ceramic, and in 1377 a Korean book was printed with metal type.
The Special Report
When something unforeseen and of special urgency happens, and the ARD’s editors-in-chief see a need for fuller coverage, the ARD broadcasts a Brennpunkt, a focal point, after the main evening edition of the Tagesschau. The first Brennpunkt aired on 6 January 1971. From 1989, the title was also used for reports on crises and disasters that were arranged at short notice and without long advance announcement.
The Expert’s Estimate Comes First
Bares für Rares, cash for rarities, has run on ZDF since 2013. Horst Lichter hosts it. People bring an old object to sell. Before any haggling, an expert examines the object and estimates its value. The seller names a price. A seller whose lowest acceptable price is above the expert’s estimate gets no Händlerkarte, the card that admits him to the dealers’ room. Inside, the dealers bid and bargain, and they do not know the estimate. The seller may refuse the best bid and take the object home. An evening special on 15 May 2017 had 6.38 million viewers.
The haggling is the entertainment. It starts only after an expert has said what the object is worth.
The Price of Public Broadcasting
Every German household pays the Rundfunkbeitrag, the broadcasting fee. Its amount is set in three steps. The public broadcasters report their financial needs. An independent commission, the KEF, checks whether the needs were calculated in line with the principles of economy and thrift. Then the state parliaments must adopt the figure. For 2021 the KEF proposed a rise of 86 cents, from 17.50 euros to 18.36 euros a month. Fifteen states approved it. Saxony-Anhalt did not. On 20 July 2021, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that this violated the freedom of broadcasting, and the court ordered the fee of 18.36 euros to apply provisionally. A state may depart from the commission’s figure only with the agreement of all the states. In November 2024, ARD and ZDF went to court again, seeking 18.94 euros from 2025. The court heard the case on 23 June 2026. As of October 2026, it had not yet ruled.
Deals That Fall Through After the Show
In the television show Die Höhle der Löwen, the lions’ den, founders present their companies to investors. The show started on VOX in 2014. A deal is agreed in front of the camera within minutes. The investors check the company only after the recording, and many deals fail at this stage. Some companies did not pass the check because the founders had made false statements on air. The counts differ. The site deutsche-startups.de counted 11 failed deals out of 16 in the first season and 15 out of 21 in the second. The film site Filmstarts counted 35 deals in the first two seasons, of which 26 failed. A technology blog, citing Business Insider, gave a much lower figure: about 40 percent.
The Word for Sunday
Das Wort zum Sonntag, the Word for Sunday, runs every Saturday evening on Das Erste, usually after the late news. On 8 May 1954, the Protestant pastor Walter Dittmann from Hamburg spoke the first one. It is the second-oldest program on German television. In 1957 it moved to Sunday evening for a time and was given another name. In 1958 it returned to its old place on Saturday evening. By its 70th anniversary in 2024, more than 3,650 episodes had been broadcast.
Sunday at Noon
Every Sunday around noon, six journalists from different countries discussed politics with Werner Höfer in the Internationaler Frühschoppen, the international morning drink. The program began on radio in 1952 and moved to television in 1953. Until 1970 it started at 11:30. When it was moved to 12:00, viewers protested, above all women. The series reached 1,874 broadcasts. It ended suddenly in 1987. It had emerged that in 1943 Höfer had written approvingly of the execution of the pianist Karlrobert Kreiten, and he was forced out. Just one week later, an almost identical program, the Presseclub, started in the same slot.