Frank Elstner
Encyclopedia
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
) is a German television
German television
Television in Germany began in Berlin on March 22, 1935, broadcasting for 90 minutes three times a week. The German television market had approximately 36.5 million television households in 2000, making it the largest television market in Europe...
presenter.
Elstner went to school in Rastatt
Rastatt
Rastatt is a city and baroque residence in the District of Rastatt, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located on the Murg river, above its junction with the Rhine and has a population of around 50'000...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and gained his first experience in broadcasting as a child when he acted in radio play
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...
s for the station then known as Südwestfunk, now as Südwestrundfunk
Südwestrundfunk
The Südwestrundfunk is a public broadcasting company for the southwest of Germany, specifically the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. The company has main offices in three cities: Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Mainz, with the director's office being in Stuttgart. It is an...
, which served the Rhineland Palatinate and southern Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg is one of the 16 states of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine, and is the third largest in both area and population of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of and 10.7 million inhabitants...
.
He first became famous as a presenter (and later as the programme director) for the German radio broadcasting programme on Radio Luxembourg (until 1983). He started out in television with shows such as Spiel ohne Grenzen (Game With No Limits; the same as "It's a Knockout
It's a Knockout
It's a Knockout was adapted from the French show Intervilles. It ran between from 7 August 1966 to 25 December 1988 on BBC1, 28 May 1990 on ITV, 3 August 1991 to 24 December 1994 on S4C and from 3 September 1999 to 6 January 2001 on Channel 5, produced by Richard Hearsey and Ronin Entertainment...
") and Die Montagsmaler (The Monday Sketchers, a game similar to Pictionary
Pictionary
Pictionary is a guessing word game designed by Robert Angel and first published in 1985 by Seattle Games Inc. The game is played with teams with players trying to identify specific words from their teammates' drawings.-Objective:...
).
In 1981 he invented the show Wetten, dass..?
Wetten, dass..?
Wetten, dass..? is a long-running German-language entertainment television show. It is the most successful Saturday television show in Europe...
("Wanna bet..?") which became extremely popular and is still one of the most successful shows in Europe. That year, Elstner was presented with a Bambi
Bambi (prize)
The Bambi - Deutschlands Wichtigster Medienpreis, often simply called Bambi Awards and stylized as BAMBI, are presented annually by Hubert Burda Media to recognize excellence in international media and television "with vision and creativity who affected and inspired the German public that year",...
, the German television and media prize. In Britain it was copied as You Bet!
You Bet!
You Bet! was a British game show based around the format of the German show Wetten, dass..? developed by Frank Elstner. You Bet! ran on ITV, mostly on Saturday nights but sometimes on Fridays, between 20 February 1988 and 12 April 1997, initially hosted by Bruce Forsyth from 1988 to 1990, then by...
and ran from 1988 to 1997. Elstner presented the German show himself until 1987, appearing 39 times altogether, before handing it over to Thomas Gottschalk
Thomas Gottschalk
Thomas Johannes Gottschalk is a German TV host. He is best-known for hosting the popular show Wetten, dass..?, which he has led to a huge success in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol.-Early life:...
.
Elstner worked for ZDF
ZDF
Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
television company for many years but moved to RTL
RTL Television
Rtl.de' redirects here. For other uses, see RTL.RTL Television , or simply RTL, is a German commercial television station distributed via cable and satellite along with DVB-T , in larger population centres...
when viewing figures dropped. Here, he presented the German version of the quiz show Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
. He also has his own company, Elstnertainment, which develops new ideas for TV shows and sells them to both public service and private television companies.
Today Elstner mainly works for Südwestrundfunk (SWR) again (formed from the old Südwestfunk and Süddeutscher Rundfunk
Süddeutscher Rundfunk
The Süddeutscher Rundfunk was a German radio and television station operating in the northern part of the state of Baden-Württemberg. It existed from 1949 to 1998, when it was merged with the then Südwestfunk to form the Südwestrundfunk....
, presenting the talk show
Talk show
A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....
Menschen der Woche. Since 28 September 2002 he has worked for ARD
ARD (broadcaster)
ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...
as the presenter of the Saturday evening show Verstehen Sie Spaß?, the German equivalent of Candid Camera
Candid Camera
Candid Camera is a hidden camera/practical joke reality television series created and produced by Allen Funt, which initially began on radio as Candid Microphone June 28, 1947...
, following on from Cherno Jobatey. Frank will be presenting his final episode of "VSS?" on November 21, 2009. He will be replaced in 2010 by Guido Cantz Until the start of 2005 he also presented the show Einfach Millionär (Simply A Millionnaire) run by the ARD television lottery; today he still announces the weekly winners of the ARD television lottery.
In 2006 Frank Elstner was listed in the Rose d'Or
Rose d'Or
The Rose d’Or is one of the most important international festivals in entertainment television. It was founded in Montreux in 1961 and has taken place in Lucerne since 2004. Producers, executives from independent and public service broadcasters and heads of production companies from over 40...
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame
A hall of fame, wall of fame, walk of fame, walk of stars or avenue of stars is a type of attraction established for any field of endeavor to honor individuals of noteworthy achievement in that field...
, on the 25th anniversary of his greatest success, Wetten, dass..?. The same year he went on a 517-kilometre pilgrimage
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
along the Way of St James, inspired by fellow television presenter Hape Kerkeling
Hape Kerkeling
Hans Peter Wilhelm "Hape" Kerkeling is a well-known German actor, presenter and comedian.-Career:At secondary school in Recklinghausen, Hape Kerkeling and some fellow students formed a band and published a record .Kerkeling started his career as a comedian in radio, working for various German...
's pilgrimage diary Ich bin dann mal weg ("I'm off for a bit, then").
Since 12 September 2006 Frank Elstner has presented the quiz show Die Besten im Südwesten (The Best in the Southwest) on the SWR. He also presents the ARD show Die große Show der Naturwunder (The Biggest Natural Wonders Show), along with Ranga Yogeshwar.
Frank Elstner is married, has five children, is a vegetarian and wears an ocular prosthetic as he has microphthalmia
Microphthalmia
Microphthalmia also referred to as microphthalmos, nanophthalmia or nanophthalmos, is a developmental disorder of the eye that literally means small eye...
.
External links
- http://www.imdb.de/name/nm0255739/