Hugo Egon Balder
He stops as a moderator of “Genial besides”
Hugo Egon Balder no longer wants to moderate “Genial beside it”.
© imago images / Stefan Zeitz
Hugo Egon Balder announced in an interview that he would turn his back on his station Sat.1 and his show “Genial Daneben”.
Presenter and actor Hugo Egon Balder (71) has in an interview with the “RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland” (RND) announced that he will celebrate his departure from Sat.1. “There is no future. After this season it’s over,” he said of his quiz show “Genial besides”.
The broadcaster has not yet contacted him, but he has decided for himself “that I no longer want that. It just doesn’t work,” explains Balder. The moderator criticizes his employer: “Sat.1 has proven to be quite resistant to advice in recent years. As a moderator you only have two options: Either you bite the bullet and do it – or you say: ‘Without me.’ And now I’ve come to the point where I’d rather say: That’s it. ” Apart from that, he also thinks that the format is now obsolete.
The audience has been enthusiastic about “Genial besides” since 2003, but recently it was weak in terms of ratings. The concept of the show: five comedians answer questions sent in by viewers as entertainingly as possible and have to improvise in the process. Initially, the quiz show with moderator Balder and prominent guessing foxes was shown until 2011. A new edition has been broadcast on Sat.1 since March 2017. Since 2018 the offshoot “Genial beseben – Das Quiz” and in 2020 a different game variant called “Genial oder beseben?” made it into the evening program.
Balder prophesied that the quotas would be low
Balder warned against the title “Genial besides – Das Quiz”, “because the viewers imagined something completely different under ‘Genial besides’. In the end I was right – the ratings went down immediately after the first broadcast” the moderator explains about the daily format. This is not an isolated case. “There are always programs produced where you at least have the feeling that it could go in your pants. And it is done anyway.” The current situation of the station makes him “sad and stunned”.
“Nothing is prescribed, there are no rehearsals and you have to learn eternal texts beforehand. We sit there and laugh,” said Balder in an interview with spot on news in April 2020, still enthusiastic about his quiz show. “A lot of people still don’t believe us and think that authors have to be behind it. That’s bullshit.” The format not only convinced Balder for a long time, but has also won numerous prizes, including the German Comedy Award, the German Television Award and the Golden Romy.
This is how Sat.1 reacts to his departure
It is still unclear what the future of the quiz show will be without Balder. In the “RND” interview, the moderator announced that he would now focus more on his second passion: “Thank God I am very lucky that I have been acting permanently for ten years. And that’s how I imagined mine to be Dude. I can still play the theater at 85 if I want to. “
When asked by the news agency spot on news, the new Sat.1 boss Daniel Rosemann said as he said goodbye to the presenter: “Dear Hugo Egon Balder, we thank you for the successful cooperation over the past decades. As a Cologne native, I like to say ‘Trude’ Lord say to you as a long-time Cologne resident: ‘You never go so completely. Something of you stays here.’ Thanks for the good years. “