Ratings Roundup: Sports Aside, Old Ones are the Best in Germany

PREMIUM: Soccer was the king of the German ratings during 2012, thanks to the UEFA European Championships; no other programming even came remotely close to Germany’s matches in the tournament in terms for audience size.

The mega-ratings gave a boost to the country’s public broadcasters ARD and ZDF, which shared the rights, but those channels performed well in most categories of the hit parade for the year. The match between Germany and Italy on June 28 on ARD pulled 27.99 million viewers, with the games against Denmark (27.67 million) on ARD and Holland (27.28 million) on ZDF close behind. Those audiences were twice as big as the top regularly scheduled program.

Boxing also did very well in 2012, with heavyweight fights featuring the Klitschko brothers giving top commercial network RTL its three biggest audiences of the year.

The top non-sports show was ZDF’s Wetten, dass..? with a single-show high of 13.59 million viewers during the year from January 1 to December 2, 2012. Wetten, dass..? was also in second place in the light entertainment category with 10.77 million viewers on another night. The Eurovision Song Contest on ARD was third (8.34 million). The source for defunct ITV series You Bet! and ABC series Wanna Bet?, Wetten, dass..? has been going strong on ZDF since 1981.

Another, even older program on public TV was the top drama series in 2012. Tatort (Crime Scene), which has been on ARD since 1970, took all three of the top places with the top episode pulling 12.19 million viewers.

The top TV movies were a feature-length episode of detective series Stubbe – Von Fall zu Fall (Stubbe – Case By Case) on ZDF (8.81 million), followed by Die Rache der Wanderhure (Revenge Of The Whore) on Sat. 1 (8.07 million) and Der Turm (The Tower) on ARD (7.59 million).

Hollywood films pulled the biggest feature film audiences on TV. However, the biggest movie success was directed by a German – Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi disaster epic 2012 on Pro 7, with 7.97 million viewers. It outscored RTL’s airing of Avatar in second place (7.04 million) and a surprise third-place finisher Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief on Pro 7 with 5.44 million.

Günther Jauch solidified his position as Germany’s most popular talk show host. His ARD program took all three of the top position in that category with a high of 5.83 million.

RTL’s telecast of the bout between Vitali Klitschko and Dereck Chisora was number one of the network with 12.92 million, followed by Wladimir Klitschko’s fights against Jean-Marc Mormeck and Mariusz Wach.