We’ll have to include “It was produced in the wrong language!” in the international version of our fan excuse bingo cards.
In its debut on German television Sunday night, Emmy-winning comedy “30 Rock” scored a 0.0 rating, meaning fewer than 5,000 viewers tuned in.
via THR.com.
Alec Baldwin…enough said.
Well…I guess 30 Rock fans can’t use the “But it does so well internationally” excuse… Ouch!
No, no, no, it scored a 9, not nein!
Seriously, Germans? Hasselhoff.
Holly – All we fans have is “Arrested Development like critical acclaim” and multiple emmy nominations. The show will likely never do well in the ratings but I still think its strong enough to air at 8:00. It will do better than Community in that slot.
To be fair, it was relaunching a network that didn’t seem to have any success in its relaunch. While I can’t imagine 30 Rock being a hit in Germany no matter what, this seems like a failure of a new network to market itself correctly, than a failure of 30 Rock alone.
(But, it is a good thing that there’s no danger of 30 Rock being canceled, at least until Baldwin quits in 2012.)
Edit: Dan, 30 Rock performs better than Community was at 9:30. NBC will never move it to 8, where it would fail miserably. They care far more about 30 Rock than a show they will don’t own and wasn’t doing too hot at 9:30 anyway.
Good. I hate this show. Nice to know at least one country has their senses.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Hillarious.Made my day.2 Words…Bad Promotion.30 Rock may be a good show but SERIOUSLY.5000 People watched it.Germany need to invest more in International Shows.
Can`t help but let it all out.
Julia – I guess thats true. It seems that NBC cares more about holding up 9-10 than developing a new comedy. Community seems to perform the same where ever it goes but I still think NBC will keep it around (due to good critical reviews)
Seinfeld fell flat in a lot of European countries too
their loss
Humour differs from country to country, 30 Rock may be critically acclaimed and have awards by the buckets but it’s going to struggle as the humour is too niche. The shows that have been successful are Friends, Two and a Half Men, Simpsons etc In the past, shows like The Nanny were very popular in Europe and places like Australia.
Robert knows that as head of the “lunatic fringe” movement, I usually only talk on the late night forums. But I will always take a shot at Talentless Tina Fey whenever I get the chance. Her and Alec Baldwin (who I only like because he likes tennis) headline the most overrated cast in television history. If only her loverboy Fallon was on it too it would be even worse.
You know if they changed the title to something else it might have been more successful, like 30 Stein Yankees. Stein is rock in German and can also be a beer stein, which might appeal to them more. And I dont think Tina Fey is talentless I think she’s done fabulous work on 30 Rock
Some sort of stand has to be established for me. What’s the average rating for shows in Germany?
If it was in a cable channel what is the surprise?
This version aired last month in the 4th portuguese network aroun 11:30 pm and don’t did great but did in line with that network, with a average of 100.000 viewers.
It’s never been a hit here in the UK and was axed by the mainstream channel Five due to low ratings. We don’t have an equivalent show to the likes of Saturday Night Live so the premise doesn’t translate & a lot of the jokes don’t travel. You need to know American culture for the show to really strike a chord imo.
They shouldve aired the bratwurst episode.
I’m Australian and LOVE 30 Rock, but to be fair its very Americanised humor it doesn’t suprise me it failed over there; Here it doesn’t air untill 11.30pm at night! Which is late, obviously but manages to still rate fairly well for its timeslot! Wish it would get bought forward to an early timeslot even if only throughout summer! Meh I resort to other means anyway
@ JayS
Your average imported primetime show (like Desperate Housewives, Lost, Law and Order) is watched by about 2 million Germans. A hit like CSI or House is watched by up to six million. Germany does not have a ratings system like Nielsen and uses marketshares in the target demos. Everthing above 5% in 18-49 is okay, House can and will do up to 30% on a good day without competing soccer games.
As Mike has already said, for a channel like Five in the UK to cancel a show means it’s either a really bad show or people just don’t “get” it. Have to say, I’d fall into the latter category as I found the first few episodes just not that funny at all.
However, a lot of American culture shows have been really successful this side of the pond. Most notably Cheers, Frasier and the ratings juggernaut that was Friends which, iirc, was so popular in its heyday that it was responsible for the only times Channel 4 beat BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Which for UK people was staggering as nothing had ever given the “big three” a run for their money before.
These days, most of the good American shows go to Channel 4/E4 and Sky One (part of the Fox network) and these days we’re awed by House (starring our very own Hugh Laurie) when we’re not laughing our socks off to The Big Bang Theory, which has translated very well to European audiences. So well in fact, that Italian fans of TBBT have actually complained about the translations not being good enough!
I’m pretty sure there are many 30 Rock fans in Germany, but they want to watch the show in English and not dubbed into German. And also, I live in Switzerland and revieve all German channels and even I have never heard of that TV station. ZDFneo? What the hell is that?
Das ist schrecklich.
P.S.: 30 Rock, just to make this clear, aired on a cable program that reaches only about 50% of German households and has also already aired on German pay channels last year, so I assume that a much lower threshold would be used for its success. Albeit probably not as low as 5000 viewers.
@ Dennis
I would think that or someone familiar with German TV it would be obvious what zdf_neo is. It’s a cable offshot of ZDF. Supposedly for all your family friendly programming needs.
To be fair, the channel it’s on isn’t even a normal cable network; it’s a channel only available via digital satellite or cable (which is 40% of households, but I doubt many of those know the channel even exists). The average market share before the rebranding was about 0,1%, and the rebranding itself wasn’t particularly promoted. Plus, 30 Rock previously premiered on premium cable (Starz type), and a significant number among the target audience probably already saw the first episode either there or via more illicit means.
In Germany is was on a “relaunched” network with new target demos.
To be fair, a British comedy also on the same evening also scored a 0. It’s hard to make Germans laugh
Great minds…
Baldwin says it’s his daughter’s fault… or Kim Basinger’s.
The Hoff, nuff said.
They should have shown that episode where Jack tries to buy that German TV station.
remember 30 rock is not your typical mainstream comedy show, so im not suprised
Exactly, 30Rock doesn’t have mass appeal anywhere, and those who wanted to see it have seen it already.
I think that’s a compliment to 30 Rock..come on it’s Germany..they love Hasselhoff’s singing..if they liked it then the writers were doing something wrong..EAT IT!!
This doesn’t surprise me, as I know two Germans who make trips to the US several times a year and the show they seem to talk about the most and look forward to watching in their hotel rooms is Saved By the Bell. Seriously.
Tina Fey is a genius and I love(d) the show, but I don’t watch it anymore because everyone involved in it seems intent on shoving their left-wing political ideology on the rest of the populace.
Why isn’t FOX putting out a press release noting that Dollhouse draws more than 3747474 times as many viewers as 30 Rock gets in Germany?! I (barely) passed math in elementary school, so I remember very well that anything times zero is zero, so I am pretty sure my math is correct!
To any German people who happen to be reading this post:
Deutschen, ich liebe Sie Ihr Deutsch Schokoladenkuchen, Deutsche Schäferhunde, Masern und Deutsch sind meine Lieblings-Art der Masern. Nun revanchieren! Dollhouse ansehen! Wenn Sie Dollhouse zu sehen, werden wir Sie verzeihen Hitler!
Dollhouse ist das Größte, was in der Welt seit einer deutschen Hausfrau erstellt das erste Papier, Kaffeefilter in 1908!
I’ve never watched 30 rock but, if it has a left-wing party agenda I may start watching. My kind of show.
Well, there was that one episode in the second season where they did make fun of German tv so… Maybe they’re holding a grudge?
Budo, I never saw it until three weeks ago and I live in ‘merica.
Why wouldn’t you just type an “A” instead of a ” ‘ “?
I’ve read before that 30 Rock does actually do well internationally. So, it didn’t hit in Germany. They don’t get 30 Rock. I don’t get their love of David Hasselhoff. Not everything translates.
As for US comedies doing well in Germany, at one point Married with Children was the top-rated American show.
It is really a niche program. But in Germany, it is a very small niche
For a while I didn’t hate or like 30 Rock… I nothinged it. But if it wins one more &*$&@ing Emmy, I swear to God…
To make this comprehensive:
This channel used to be a tiny, tiny digital niche channels that was given to the public broadcasters when digital channels first appeared to become available. On the whole, digital has not caught on in Germany, which has had about 30 national analogue free-TV channels for the last fifteen years. The pubcasters still hold on to these channels against the day when digital does catch on in a serious way, but they have not made much of an effort programming or promoting them.
Now ZDF has done something controversial (because they are spending a lot of public license-fee money on a channels nobody watches) and relaunched one of their three digital channels, ZDF Dokukanal, as ZDF_Neo. The original channel had an audience share of 0.1 % overall, or 0.3 % of people in homes where it is available. If you want to express that in ratings rather than shares, you need a lot of zeroes. The “30 Rock” episodes that are now reported by THR were aired on re-launch day.
So it’s no wonder that “30 Rock” did not work on ZDF_Neo. (As THR mentions, nothing does.) While there is no ratings data available to the public on pay channels, I’m almost certain that it even fared better when it first aired on pay-channel TNT Serie earlier this year.
idizzle,
you’re misleading the others. Of course there is a Nielsen-like ratings system in Germany. There is a tendency to measure success in shares rather than ratings (which I’m still not sure isn’t how the U.S. networks do it internally as well), but the basic system is the same. And imported shows can get all kinds of ratings and shares, even on the “Big 8″ mainstream channels – from a few hundred thousand viewers (like “Damages”) to five million and more (like “House”).
And one more thing: It’s a myth that Hasselhoff is particularly popular in Germany. The guy had a single no. 1 hit single in 1990, and that’s it. Look if up if you don’t believe me.
Hasselhoff’s single #1 hit was in 1989. I looked it up.
http://www.musikindustrie.de/gold_platin_datenbank/?action=1&strSuche=Looking+for+Freedom
Well, close enough.
Same here in France. The ratings were horrible. But americans comedy’s ratings (except for Friends) are horrible in France
@ Ray
Yay, I know, I phrased real misleadingly. Sorry. I just meant you can’t really give rating figures that are easily compareable to the US ones. Like when I say House had a 25% marketshare how does that really translate to a 5.6 rating? Is what I meant.
cont.
Plus, of course a show can get a couple thousand viewers even on the bigger networks, but how long is that really gonna last, you figure? Everything under 1.5-2 million in primetime is in a certain danger of being moved to midnight or put to sleep. See Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone, even Criminal Minds to an extend.
Something else to mention maybe is, that sitcoms are just not a big primetime factor in Germany. Even succesful ones like Friends or Married with Children had the bulk of their run in the afternoon. The Simpsons is doing decent in primetime, but generally sitcoms are late night or afternoon programming in Germany.
But yes, idizzle, you can compare. We are used to using market shares for Germany and ratings for the US, but both metrics are available for both markets.
In fact, Robert and Bill do provide shares – for 18-49 – for the US on this site every day. And in Germany, last week’s “House” (for example) had a 6.9 rating (17 share) in all viewers and a 10.1 rating (27 share) in the 14-49 demo.
As a matter of fact, this is what ratings are good for – comparing success across targets (or markets), because unlike total viewer numbers, they are independent of the size of the target (or market) universe.
Ok, I admit I did not know that. So, my bad.
its a overpromoted and unfunny show, its hard undertand how nbc keeps renew it.. and in german someone got it in time
Alec Baldwin the Mortician.
A man who just died is delivered to Baldwin’s mortuary wearing an expensive, expertly tailored black suit.
Baldwin asks the deceased’s wife how she would like the body dressed.
Baldwin points out that the man does look good in the black suit he is already wearing.
The widow, however, says that she always thought her husband looked his
best in blue, and that she wants him in a blue suit.
The widow gives the Baldwin a blank check and says, ‘I don’t care what it costs, but please have my husband in a blue suit for the viewing.’
The widow returns the next day for the wake.
To her delight, she finds her husband dressed in a gorgeous blue suit
with a subtle chalk stripe; the suit fits him perfectly …
She says to Baldwin, ‘Whatever this cost, I’m very satisfied. You did an excellent job and I’m very grateful. How much did you spend?’
To Baldwin’s astonishment, she presents him with the blank check.
There’s no charge,’ Baldwin says.
No, really, I must compensate you for the cost of that exquisite blue
suit!’ she says.
Honestly, ma’am,’ Baldwin says, it cost nothing. You see, a
deceased gentleman of about your husband’s size was brought in shortly
after you left yesterday, and he was wearing an attractive blue suit.
I asked his wife if she minded him going to his grave wearing a black suit
instead, and she said it made no difference as long as he looked nice. .
So Baldwin said. “I just switched the heads.”
Well, I’m from Germany and I have seen every single episode of 30 Rock – in English. The numbers don’t surprise me. It was the first day of broadcasting for ZDF_neo, which until 11/1 was as documentary channel. There was virtually no promotion. I just remembered the launch today, when a colleague told me about it. In general “insider jokes” and puns don’t work in German. Very few people get the cultural references and puns can’t be translated most of the time, which kills the joke. Dramas on the other hand work very well, because they can be easily translated for the most part without losing the meaning. There have been shows, which had to be completely rewritten in German, because the translation didn’t work at all. For example last night’s Big Bang Theory heavily relied on the audience’s knowledge of American Football to make it funny. I got the joke, because I am one of the few people in Germany, who watch the NFL. Most people here only know, that in American football big guys in helmets crash into each other. So the joke’s lost on them.
i watched the first 2 seasons of “30 rock” via hulu, brit tv and filesharing. so no need for having this show on neo. Some people here got this show via pay tv on TNT, i think. So no problem with zero premiere on sunday. With almost no promotion for this new channel it isnt a surprise at all. Its really good that the ZDF with its new channel is bringing up some good US and Brit Shows back on public television. I guess, no big commercial broadcaster in germany will think about bringing 30 rock on air. They know that it is not a program for big audience – like eg House MD.
So im really curious about neo and how it will develops….
@Joss’s Biggest Fan: I know that my english isn’t quite good, but u’re german is awful, most of it doesn’t even make sense …
@ many others: It’s funny that u all believe Hasselhoff would be something like our “hero”. In point of fact nowadays, we are laughing our a** of, when we here u talk about germany, bratwurst, our big hoff, sauerkraut or many other prejudices wich u connect with us.
Back to topic: I watched 30 rock like many other germans alrdy in the english version and loved it. ZDFneo is very unpopular, i didnt even know of it’s existence … so these bad ratings can’t surprise me, the germans who wanted to see it alrdy did on dvd and the “mainstream-tv-watchers” who could have seen it accidentally don’t watch ZDFneo…