Cult radio present: 50 years of “Hello OB van” – Carmen Thomas remembers | EUROtoday

Talking for 3 hours about mites, pencils or urine – that was what the radio present “Hello OB van” was all about. The first version with a moderator Carmen Thomas ran 50 years in the past on Thursday (December 5). The subject on the time: “St. Nicholas celebrations in kindergarten.” It sounds innocent at first, nevertheless it was fairly one thing.

“The key question was: Is it worth losing children’s trust so early?” says Carmen Thomas, now 78 years previous. “After all, they’re led to imagine that Santa Claus is actual. And on high of that, the strict man uncovered youngsters in entrance of an viewers by publicly studying out their sins.” There was loads of room for debate about that – and the present was already on observe.

Six million listeners per broadcast

In the years that adopted, “Hello OB Van” grew to become more and more standard, with six million listeners tuning in at instances throughout the broadcast time on Thursday mornings. The matters had been steered by the viewers, and for every difficulty Thomas and her workforce went to a special location in North Rhine-Westphalia that was associated to the respective subject. The journalist and writer, who lives in Cologne, believes that this could not be conceivable at this time: “People would no longer stand in the snow, rain or heat for three hours – without seats, without coffee.”

Some of the reveals had been very full of life – in spite of everything, we had been touring within the wild 70s. The then Federal Minister of the Interior Gerhart Baum (FDP), for instance, was on the dying listing on the time Red Army Faction (RAF) – he nonetheless got here on stage with out bodyguards.

In 1994, Thomas gave up moderation after virtually 1,000 broadcasts. “It was good to stop at the peak,” she says. “Hello Ü-Van” continued to run for 16 years, however on Saturdays and on the data channel WDR5 as a substitute of the mass program WDR2. The station discontinued the format in 2010. The largest ARD broadcaster justified the step by saying that effort and profit had been not in proportion to 1 one other. In addition, listener participation is now out there in lots of codecs – and it’s even doable on a regular basis on the Internet.

Unfiltered viewers participation was the important thing function

Thomas sees it in a different way: Yes, there’s definitely participation, however not as unfiltered as with “Hello OB van”. There, events may merely come from the viewers onto the stage and be part of within the dialogue with out having to be questioned and put by their paces by an editorial member beforehand.

The incontrovertible fact that at this time it’s typically solely clarified what somebody needs to say “on air” additionally has to do with the truth that extremist or racist statements needs to be averted. Carmen Thomas counters: “I as soon as explicitly invited somebody who claimed that the images of corpses in Auschwitz had been photomontages from the CIA. I allowed that to occur, and I did not denigrate this particular person myself – that might solely have resulted in others displaying solidarity with him.” She didn’t want to be the “mom mom” who corrected people. “But the chairman of the Auschwitz prisoners’ affiliation was there and he stated one thing about it – that was far more convincing.”

Today she misses such open arguments involving everybody, even with a sure diploma of incalculability. “I still consider experiencing freedom and democracy on the station to be an important quality feature for public broadcasting. And “Hello OB Van” can nonetheless be a task mannequin at this time.”

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