Zur deutschen Version dieses ArtikelsThis is a report about one of the German second season shows from 2009. You may also:
» Display all my reports about this season 2.
» Display everything about the first season 2008.
» Display all articles about Uri Geller.
So Jan Becker, “the master of thoughts” with the apostrophe haircut, is the winner of the title and the 100,000 Euro prize money. With his combination of magic tricks, cold reading and overly pompous pep talk, he seems to have appealed to the audience (always assuming the results were not manipulated), but rather appaled me… Though through this talk he somehow is a “worthy” successor to Uri Geller in a stricter sense.
Well, successor – successor to Vincent Raven, last year’s winner (who didn’t get fit quickly enough after his stroke to compete as originally planned), successor to Geller himself who however doesn’t seem to have any plans to retreat from stage, thus not really needing a successor at all. But the show needs a title. Even better would have been a kind of “Germany’s magic idol”, I think – no “mysterious powers” jabbering, no Geller’s dumbing of the masses, but simply honest magic art fascination. But that’d be nothing interesting for ProSieben, and they wouldn’t have attracted a known name like Uri Geller to advertise the show. Then again, he’s rather got the qualities of a red rag now, I guess. Maybe he’ll find a new home on Astro-TV…
A reason for Ully Loup’s, probably quite a few viewers’ favorite, loss yesterday was probably that he just did some little electricity game that didn’t fit the image as “madman” with hidden emotions that he built over the course of this season at all. I generally don’t like the way they did it with taped performances in the final, anyway.
At any rate, the show got what it deserved, that is:
Ratings
Blue lines: all viewers; orange lines: target audience aged 14-49:
The best ratings this year (at the 1st show) were lower than the worst ratings last year, and they didn’t improve even for the final – so it would really be a miracle if there will be a third season. (Cf. press reports below). They didn’t say anything about it in the show yesterday.
Also, some shows were shorter than planned, there was no long overtime like last year.
Page accesses
No detailed statistics this year, I just want to mention that the number of page views for my reports were clearly below those of last year too. However I still could note several hundred views per show with 40–75 simultaneously during the shows – so here again thank you for reading and commenting.
Press reports
All are German reports, title and quotes my translation:
Monsters & Critics: «The next Uri Geller» will be the last one:
The TV station ProSieben does not make an official statement about ending the show, a spokeswoman only said: «We will continue to work with Uri Geller.»
In general, that may sound horrible – just think about the terrible alien show – but given the ratings, I don’t think there will be a lot to follow.
Even though the then ProSieben boss Andreas Bartl grandly announced in spring 2008 to have made a long-term contract with Uri Geller and plan more projects with him – a continuation for “The Next Uri Geller” is highly unlikely, given the miserable ratings this year.
Quotenmeter: Uri Geller also fails in the final
See also:
- My pre-show report with all ten contestants.
- Skeptic’s dictionary: Uri Geller.
- ProSieben page about the show (German).
» Go to all my posts about Uri Geller. «
Photo: shadowvincent/Fotolia.com
Astra1 2009-03-04 at 20:06 10 Comments
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Why, what do you think? Why the second show was less successful? Did something change in the show or was there a stronger competition this year?
cimddwc 2009-03-04 at 20:46 6322 Comments
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I don’t think the competition from other TV stations were significantly stronger. I guess (and hope) it was a waning interest in Geller altogether (including that alien show I mentioned) and the way the show was presented. I don’t think that the magicians were that much less attractive to explain the ratings difference.
Well, maybe it was many people thinking “one season was enough”…
BTW the report’s translation is complete.
Astra2 2009-03-05 at 8:38 10 Comments
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“Waning interest in Geller” – I’d say “maybe” but there is not much of Geller in the show. And mentalists were not so bad. The reason “one season was enough” sounds more credible. Maybe people expected that Uri Geller will find a successor and really will leave German TV:)
I see you don’t like Geller. What does make you watch the show and write so detailed report in 2 languages?
Thank you very much for English translation.
cimddwc 2009-03-05 at 9:43 6322 Comments
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I’ve been asking that myself, too.
Well, as you said yourself, there are interesting acts from the mentalists, so it’s reason enough to watch it. And writing about it (and grumbling about the bad parts – which is fun, too) somewhat divert my attention from the bad and boring parts.
Doing it in English, too, is because, well, I thought in the beginning it might be useful and interesting for non-German-speaking readers, and once I had started I kept doing it for the sake of completeness, if you will, and because there were people (like you) who were indeed interested in it.
Astra3 2009-03-11 at 12:15 10 Comments
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By the way, Dutch show had success and high ratings.
cimddwc 2009-03-11 at 13:02 6322 Comments
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A peak of 44.8%? Guess the Dutch are in for another season next year… (They’re not using the same studio as the German version anymore anyway, so that won’t mean anything about whether we’ll have a 3rd season in Germany or not.)