Johannes B. Kerner

Johannes Baptist Kerner (born December 9, 1964 in Bonn) is a German TV personality best known as a sportscaster and host of a late night talk show bearing his name.

Kerner was raised in Hersel, Germany in a catholic household. He attended bording school at Aloisiuskolleg in Bonn and went on to study business administration in Berlin, but did not graduate.

Career

He started his career in television at Sender Freies Berlin in 1986 first as an intern, then as a reporter for local sportscasts. From 1990 to 1992 he regularly hosted "Punkt 4 Länderreport", a national afternoon newscast on ARD.

He became known to a wider audience as a host and producer for the popular soccer show ran on the private Sat.1 channel when the network acquired the broadcasting rights to the Fußball-Bundesliga, the highest national soccer league in Germany. He hosted the show from August 1992 until end of 1997 in rotation with a number of other young broadcasters who went on to become TV personalities in Germany, including Reinhold Beckman (who now hosts his own weekly talk show), Oliver Welke and Monica Lierhaus. For this show he received a number of awards, including a price as the most well-liked sportscaster in 1996 and 1997 by the German sports magazine Sport Bild.

In 1996 Johannes B. Kerner started his first daily afternoon talkshow on Sat 1 simply called "Kerner".

In 1997 he switched to a public television channel again, this time to ZDF (as an independent freelancer) where he was a host for the popular weekly sports review "das aktuelle sportstudio" (until 2006) and a number of soccer games played by the German national team. He served as main host for all games broadcasted by ZDF during the FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany in front of a large live audience in Berlin, for which he receive a "Deutscher Fernsehpreis" award (comparable to an Emmy). In addition to this, he was master of ceremonies for several special show programs on ZDF such as yearly reviews of the people and stories making news in the past twelve months around Christmas.

Johannes B. Kerner Show

His self-named talk show went on air every Thursday night on ZDF at around 11 pm since January 1998. Due to its success it was expanded to four times per week from Tuesday to Friday in January 2002. The show features mostly German celebrities and TV personalities, as well as regular people with interesting stories. Unlike other typical late night shows, "Johannes B. Kerner" does not open with Kerner holding any stand-up monologue and only has him sitting at a desk and talking with a number of guests seated next to him (usually 3 to 5). Also there is no regular live band in the studio.

Kerner is known for a rather soft interviewing style that leaves his guests a lot of room, but still has caused a number of controversies over the years. On at least two occasions he invited minors on his show that had just experienced horrible tragedies (most notable after the Erfurt massacre), and recently in October 2007 he created a wide discussion when he asked former anchorwoman Eva Herman to leave the studio after some critical and politically incorrect remarks during an interview. He also has been criticized for not clearly separating his public/journalistic and private interests, starring in television commercials before the initial public offering of Air Berlin, a German airline whose CEO and founder is a friend of Johannes B. Kerner and who has appeared on his show before.

Since January 21, 2005 his Friday evening session has been completely transformed into a cooking show called "Kochen bei Kerner" (Cooking with Kerner). Normally the show features five chefs who each explain and prepare a course for an elaborate meal live and within one hour. After each cook has finished his or her dish Kerner and the others are tasting and informally judging it, before some people in the audience also receive a sample of it. The show regularly features some of the most famous chefs from German-speaking countries such as Johann Lafer, Alfons Schubeck, Tim Mälzer, Sarah Wiener, Ralf Zacherl and Horst Lichter, as well as occasionally some internationally acclaimed chefs like Jamie Oliver.

Originally the cooking show was only planned as a one-time replacement after an exclusive talk with actor George Clooney had to be cancelled, yet viewers liked this format so much that it was expanded to a regular show.

Private life and trivia

Johannes B. Kerner is married to Britta Becker, a former field hockey World Cup and Olympic medalist for Germany. They have three children and currently reside in Hamburg, where his talk show is produced.
*As a distraction from his job Kerner enjoys long-distance running, having competed in several marathon races.
*He is left-handed.

References

External links

* [http://www.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/23/0,1872,2008567,00.html Official profile on ZDF homepage]