Unexpected twinge of memory, now, with the accompanying program for the European Football Championship, to regularly see as many people from abroad in the studio of ARD and ZDF who either spoke German, like the Dane Bjarne Goldbæk and the Belgian Marc Wilmots, or had to be dubbed as the French Christian Karembeu, who in any case interrupted the routines of such live broadcasts simply because they were sitting there now.
They brought a different tone of voice, a different style and thus also required respect from the full-time German moderators who sat in the studio with these guests and now had to adjust to the other perspective.
This interruption in the black, red and gold of everyday football was reminiscent of something that had once been everyday life on German television, but which has long since disappeared.
Bill from Ohio
Then, in early July, Bill Ramsey, a singer of the kind of hits that you can sing along with if you just read the title: "Pigalle", "Souvenirs", "Mimi never goes to bed without a thriller", died: Bill from Ohio, who came to Germany as an occupation soldier, but then mainly conquered the entertainment of the Federal Republic of Germany. A tall white man with glasses and a black voice that was witty and cosmopolitan. And at the same time one of the many from elsewhere - like Caterina Valente, like Vico Torriani, Chris Howland, Lou van Burg, Vivi Bach, Gitte, Milva, Rudi Carrell - who could be seen and heard all the time for a while Germans switched on at a quarter past eight.
German entertainment television would never have become what it is without all of them.
Until the German entertainment television decided to be itself enough with its folk music shows and quiz shows and talk shows and folk music shows and quiz shows and talk shows.
And no longer dared to leave this province.
How much wider the world of German television used to be is now reminiscent of the sports program of the European Championship.
Involuntarily and perhaps also imposed by the high number of states of this otherwise depressing EM.
But maybe something sticks out of it anyway, rubs off on other formats.
In the obituaries of Bill Ramsey it was now possible to read what an outstanding jazz musician he had been, perhaps also to somehow calculate it against the hits that had made him famous. But actually, choruses like “Pigalle, Pigalle!” Or “Souvenirs, souvenirs!” Were less about meaning than about
flow
. Bill Ramsey died at the age of ninety on the Elbe, where he had spent the last years of his life, as a German citizen.