Television up close

The guided tours of the studios in Berlin Adlershof attract both Berliners and non-Berliners

Berlin is not only the country’s capital but also a television hub. Many of the studios in Berlin Adlershof are up to 2,400 square metres large and home to TV mainstays like ‘Verstehen Sie Spaß?’ and ‘Klein gegen Groß’. The so-called chancellor duels, too, are produced here.

Studio Berlin GmbH has been offering guided studio tours in cooperation with tvtickets.de since 2008. Sydney and Marc drove from Braunschweig especially. Right after their tour, they will be among the audience for the recording of ‘Wer stiehlt mir die Show?’, a game show. “I just really like the mix the show offers. Everything happens like clockwork,” says Marc, waxing lyrically.

Some of the audience members might also watch the clock because the four-hour game show featuring German TV superstar Joko Winterscheidt is recorded in one sitting. This is the second time for the two Braunschweig natives, so they already know the drill. They register at the reception desk an hour and a half before the show and get a snack and a small drink. They hand in their mobile phones and off they go.

During the last show’s recording, the winner was a contestant called Svenrik, who applied to take part in Joko’s show through social media. He won against celebrities like Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Sido, Bill Kaulitz, and Joko himself. Sydney and Marc are very excited because this show will also features several top stars.

“We’re keeping all our fingers crossed for Sarah Connor. She scored many points in previous shows but then she became ill. It’s all the more important that she nails it this time.” Joko is in top form. The famous host now tends to share a few more private anecdotes in his shows, which Sydney enjoys. Joko recently shared that he is afraid of heights and coming down the big stairs of ‘Wer stiehlt mir die Show?’ is in fact quite a challenge.

All the show formats of Joko Winterscheidt and Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, his equally famous partner, are produced by their own company, Florida Entertainment. For his ‘Late Night Berlin’ format, Klaas had an entire studio retrofitted with wood. Since then, the studio has had a pleasant smell of pine. Contrary to ‘Wer stiehlt mir die Show?’, ‘Late Night Berlin’ is recorded on a Tuesday afternoon and ‘live on tape’. In the jargon, that’s almost as good as live. Typically, the show is recorded live and then broadcast as is. Scenes are only cut in absolutely exceptional cases. If there is a sound problem when the band performs, this part of the recording can be repeated after the audience has been consulted.

Before Sydney and Marc experience the latest recording of ‘Wer stielt mir die Show?’, they listen to the studio guides spilling the beans. During one tour, Alec Völkel and Sascha Vollmer of ‘The BossHoss’ were recording ‘The Voice of Germany’ in Adlershof while a tour was taking place. “Suddenly, half of our group had vanished,” the guides remember, laughing. The two seasoned musicians were very relaxed, patiently signed autographs, and took selfies with everyone. Sometimes, the guests of the ‘The Voice’ studio ask if they can stay put because they booked a timeslot for the subsequent, second round of recordings. However, show business never sleeps and so the studio must be cleared and prepared for the next five hours.

“When I had my first tour, I was shaking like a leaf,” remembers one guide. Featuring a police car chase and other stunts in the parking lot, they were extremely action-packed. The tour also showed how fights were staged and how to make them look real. In the long run, however, the stunt show was too expensive and couldn’t be reconciled with the current productions and recordings. Today’s studio tour has 50 visitors. Many of them, like Sydney and Marc, use the rest of the day to visit game shows. They will be the first to know whether Sarah Connor will win the show. Live in the studio.

Susanne Gietl for Adlershof Journal

Registration for a guided studio tour:

• tvtickets.de/studiofuehrung-berlin.php