- ZDF-Hitparade
The ZDF - Hitparade, or Hitparade for short, was one of the most popular and most well-known music television series by German TV channel
ZDF . It was developed by "Truck Branss" andDieter Thomas Heck and broadcasted onJanuary 18 1969 for the first time. The first theme song was written in 1968 byJames Last and remained a hallmark of the show until the last show with host Dieter Thomas Heck onDecember 15 1984 .The first host was Dieter Thomas Heck, who presented the show once a month on Saturday at half past seven. In the show various interpreters sang their current songs. The interpreters predominantly came from the range of the German
Schlager .When the show was conceived by Dieter Thomas Heck, he established some novelties to the Schlager-Genre, which already had adapted a somewhat conservative reputation as opposed to the current musical trends at the time. Among those novelties was the rule that each singer had to present his or her song live (to music from half-
playback ). The earlier musical TV-shows had long before switched to full-playback. Also, with the exception of the pilot, each show of the Hitparade was live, which also was unusual. Another introduction of the Hitparade was the stage design. All earlier musical shows in German television had a somewhat theatre-like design which caused a huge distance between singer and audience. Also, stage design was quite opulent with heavy decorations and curtains. Singing at the Hitparade in contrast meant that the audience sat all around the singer while the stage design was a modern chrome steelpipe thing.The most important novelty that was introduced by Dieter Thomas Heck was that the audience at the Hitparade had the possibility to assert influence to the choice of musical artists. The viewers could select their favorite titles by postcard, which were then allowed to show up again in the subsequent broadcast. One artist got the chance to come back on subsequent shows with one song twice.
Subsequent hosts of the Hitparade were Viktor Worms (1985 - 1990) and Uwe Hübner (1990 - 2000). The last episode took place on
December 16 2000 .External links
* [http://popup.zdf.de/spiele/orange/zdfhitparade/index_orange.html Schlager-Database by
ZDF , with search function for Title, Singer or Episode]
* [http://www.hitparadenforum.de/index.php comprehensive Informationen, statistical Data and Broadcast dates on "ZDF, ZDFtheaterkanal" und "3sat"]
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