In-depth Welt now… this is actually the culmination of a long history which dates back to ProSieben’s and Sat.1’s early days. They had attempted to compete with the big names (ARD, ZDF, RTL) after seeing the successful news-offensive made by then-RTLplus in 1992 after Peter Kloeppel took over as anchorman and managing editor. They attempted many times to go all-in in trying to emulate their success, however, Sat.1’s main evening news has always been a distant fourth behind Tagesschau, RTL Aktuell and ZDF heute; ProSieben’s newscasts have had always fluctuated in the ratings, but now it is just considered as “that news program before The Simpsons come on” (no pun intended).
Each channel has taken its own way historically: in the case of ProSieben, after a first attempt under former DFF anchor Jan Fromm, when it was named Tagesbild (only to be dropped after the ARD complained about the moniker being too similar to the Tagesschau) and expanded their broadcasts from short updates to a daily full-fledged evening programme, they snapped up Wolfgang Klein, one of the former presenters of the ARD’s Weltspiegel (an international affairs magazine produced by the WDR), and, by 1996, Klein had relaunched the newscast and a brand new American-style graphics package by Pittard Sullivan (the now-defunct agency behind all of ProSieben’s graphics since 1994) and a carbon-copy of WSVN’s Newsplex was installed. Klein was the anchorman of the main 19:30 edition, rotating with Christiane Gerboth-Jörges (who would remain anchor until her retirement in 2011). The style and content was stabilized thereafter, even if Klein resigned to return to public TV and replaced by both Florian Fischer-Fabian and Michael Marx, and even after the ProSieben-Sat.1 merger.
At Sat.1, they also began their news department with short updates, initially produced by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, later in-house (Sat.1 Blick). By 1991, the broadcaster wanted to expand their news department by aping the Tagesschau instead of going American, by hiring Dieter Kronzucker and Brigitte Weirich to front a new evening news block, Guten Abend Deutschland, which mixed hard news with analysis and opinion. It was not a success, causing the broadcaster to continue tinkering with news formats for a while; however, its regional newscasts began to be competitive with the local broadcasters. By 1994, as the broadcaster became a Berlin-licensed channel, it took the opportunity to reposition its newscasts. The evening newscast moved to 18:30 with new newscasters: Hans-Hermann Gockel (formerly anchor of the Sat.1 Frühstücksfernsehen, now media spokesperson for the far-right AfD party), Ulrich Meyer (by then anchoring the Akte tabloid service newsmagazine), Clarissa Ahlers (later finding success at n-tv) and Astrid Frohloff (anchorwoman since 1999, now working at RBB). In 1999, a watershed moment happened as SAT.1 moved to a state-of-the-art newsroom at the Berlin city centre. By 2004, another relaunch: Thomas Kausch (later main anchor of NDR Info’s late edition from Hannover, now working at Bild TV) replaced Frohloff as anchorman, under the support of TeleZüri and Tele24 founder Roger Schawinski (by then SAT.1 director) and the newscasts were renamed SAT.1 News; it additionally launched newsmagazines at other times to compete with RTL’s tabloid magazines to mixed success. By 2008, a last ditch measure coinciding with a short-lived rebrand: Peter Limbourg was named anchorman and managing editor, and the broadcaster boasted its political experience upon its promotion: although ratings were still low, they stabilized until Marc Bator was poached from Tagesschau, a result of Limbourg’s promotion to Director General of Deutsche Welle.
During and after the ProSieben-Sat.1 merger, both broadcasters began planning the founding stages of N24, which launched on January 24, 2000. The channel wanted to differentiate itself from n-tv with a shorter and snappier newscast schedule and frequent breaking news and finance updates, as well as the use of then-new technology, including virtual sets and graphics powered by Vizrt. They were also the launch clients of earthTV, and had a pioneering partnership with Bloomberg and later with CNBC Europe. However, the crisis came and P7S1 was forced to sell N24 to independent investors in 2009 (well before Axel Springer came) in exchange for the outsourcing of news production, additionally, the group centralized all operations at its HQ in Munich (on the Unterföhring suburb); it also began increasing the number of documentaries and non-news programming on prime time and undid many of the pioneering partnerships to cut costs.
The outsourcing agreement with ProSiebenSat.1 was renewed shortly after the Axel Springer takeover of N24; the channel was renamed Welt in early 2017, due to Axel Springer wanting to create a Multiplatform media hub starting from the resources of its hard newspaper Die Welt. On April 24, 2021, Welt left its Potsdamer Platz leased building in downtown Berlin to move to the new Axel Springer building by Rem Koolhaas; this was further enhanced that December with the launch of a new day part-based news schedule and new openers. Over in the FTA channels, they did get horrid new virtual sets:
The outsourcing agreement expired at the end of last year, and ProSiebenSat.1 declined to renew it, instead relaunching an in-house news operation, including building new facilities in their newly-built headquarters in the Unterföhring suburb of Munich, part of a larger campus project for the broadcaster. The news operations are being overseen by a newly-created division of their in-house production company, Seven.One Entertainment Group, under the direction of Sven Pietsch, also responsible for factual programming. A Welt veteran editor, Arne Teetz, is serving as managing editor, whilst Charlotte Potts, formerly anchor of the ZDF Morgenmagazin, is the political editor, based in Berlin. As part of the massive relaunch of the news department, P7S1 hired a number of key news presenters and reporters from mainly public service broadcasters ARD and ZDF, including Karolin Kandler and Linda Zervakis; additionally, existing presenters and reporters were reassigned to new shifts and editorial positions.
Although the operations are back in-house, they are no graphical changes to be seen as of right now. The horrid virtual set designs are being retained, as is each channels’ news designs; however, this is a temporary measure. P7S1 plans to gradually introduce from late spring a common, unified news brand, where newscasts in all three channels and a new digital offering will sit. Additionally, a real set design is being built for the common brand, set to launch this summer.
Welt decided to eventually find a new partner in Red Bull-owned ServusTV, whose German operation is starting to separate from its Austrian counterpart. The Vienna-based access prime slot was replaced with new shows targeted at the local audience, including Germany-specific newscasts at 6pm and 7:20pm (aping the slots of its Austrian newscasts) and a lighter style magazine produced by subsidiary Maz & More, Guten Abend Deutschland. The studio where P7S1’s newscasts aired was refurbished with a new hard set from their to-go set designers Veech x Veech.
In the other hand, the Austrian versions of ProSieben and Sat.1 have recently not aired the German editions of newscasts due to new laws forcing locally licensed channels to produce its own Austrian-oriented newscasts. Profiting from this, ProSieben launched a local newscast, then named ProSieben Austria TopNews. They also launched their morning show, Café Puls, in 2005, a three way simulcast with the local SAT.1 and kabel eins versions. Unable to compete with the ZIB 2 over at the ORF, the evening newscast was relaunched in 2006 and counterprogrammed at 18:00, now under the AustriaNews name. This increased ratings and prompted the German counterpart to move Newstime at such time unsuccesfully. When P7S1 bought Puls TV in 2007, it was relaunched as Puls 4 the following year, taking on a similar content policy to ProSieben, but with a strong local flavor. Initially with short newscasts as Puls 4 News, they were quickly integrated within the ProSieben AustriaNews fold and they launched an additional newscast for SAT.1, as the channel had gained a license within the country and therefore was forced to air a local newscast.
After Corinna Milborn (a political scientist and journalist) was hired in 2012 to host a political talk show, Pro/Contra, P7S1 quickly embraced her experience as an up and coming journalist, hiring her full-time as news director some months later. Milborn relaunched and boosted the news department under the Puls 4 News name and a set of new programmes, including the ultimately unsuccesful Guten Abend Österreich, which mixed news, talk and lifestyle under the 90 minute show; after a botched format change and the addition of a News-Quiz, the show was canceled by 2014, replaced by a conventional Puls 4 News broadcast at 19:30, which has ultimately established as a modest competitor to the ORF. After P7S1 bought commercial rival ATV from Leonine, their newsroom was integrated with that of Puls 4 News, however, on competition grounds, their newscast remains separate from that of Puls 4. After the merger, the broadcaster decided to launch the Puls 24 channel in response to the CNN-backed OE24.TV, to great success; the Puls 4 newscasts were renamed after the newly-launched FTV channel (it was initially free-to-air, however, after some months, it was encrypted in a free-to-view basis, like most Austrian TV channels). Since 2022, the ATV Aktuell and Puls 24 News were finally unified into a single Puls 24 Aktuell brand, although the Puls 4/24 and ATV editions continue to be produced separately.
