The era of soccer on pay TV began three decades ago in Germany: Premiere began.
Those who didn't pay could at least hear.
Looking back at the beginnings.
Munich - The one with the red denim jacket, in which he conducted the first sensationally cheeky interview with Udo Lattek - no, that was only later.
On Sat.1, in the soccer show "ran".
When it started on the station “Premiere”, where Reinhold Beckmann was also the sports director and front man, he wore a relatively neat jacket and tie, which were perhaps a tad too loosely tied.
But on March 2, 1991, they wanted to signal that a new era was beginning on television: For the first time, the pay-TV broadcaster Premiere, which is now called Sky *, broadcast a Bundesliga game live.
So that was 30 years ago.
Premiere without advertising - a command that was tacitly eroded more and more
A tremendously advanced notion of a commercial league game on television having a live-and-in-color stage.
For decades, the Bundesliga * took place only in snippets in the ARD sports show and on Saturday evening in the ZDF sports studio, with some games there was no camera at all.
There was a relegation game live, that was on Sat.1, one of the young privateers: Udo Lattek was the expert at the microphone and a certain Peter Peters, who later became an official at Schalke 04, was the commentator.
Otherwise only international matches came live.
In 1991, Premiere joined the company.
Pay TV, something new for Germans.
Something exotic.
Pay extra?
The decoder cost 120 D-Marks, the monthly subscription fee was 39 Marks.
Premiere only had one channel on which everything ran - some even freely available like a talk format with Roger Willemsen.
And football once a week.
Encrypted.
Nevertheless, you could watch without a decoder: The picture was shredded in black and white and entered the living room.
You could guess what was being shown.
It was like a radio play.
Didn't bother too much in the age that was still dominated by tube TVs.
Premiere promised its customers something special: The game should be completely illuminated.
The station was in the top match Eintracht Frankfurt - 1. FC Kaiserslautern (4: 3) for 135 minutes.
There was a run-up, a program in the half-time break, no advertising was planned.
Premiere advertised to be ad-free - a command that was tacitly eroded over the years in order to finance the increasingly expensive TV rights.
The first Premiere crew: Beckmann was the boss.
In 1990 he had done great reports for ARD, for example about Yugoslav football that was being dispersed by ethnic forces.
The man with the fine-rimmed glasses became the first football commentator that the institutions tore over.
For the first game, Reinhold Beckmann brought on Hannes Bongartz, ex-national player and coach, as co-commentator.
Bundesliga on pay TV: Premiere wanted interviews at half-time - DFB weighed it down
Premiere man from the very beginning was someone whose time at Sky * will soon end: Jörg Dahlmann.
One of the young, researching storytellers from the ZDF stable.
For Premiere he should get close to the players, interviews directly from the edge of the field should be a trademark of pay TV, an added value for the viewer.
Actually, Premiere wanted to have the actors made available at half-time, but the DFB * forbade that.
Beckmann reacted fiercely and had his editorial team prepare a satire about the ban on half-time breaks.
"Cleared by DFB" was the name of the piece.
Dahlmann did not have a glamorous debut at Premiere.
Eintracht coach Jörg Berger refused to answer a third question - two seemed to be enough of a service to the media -, Uwe Bein sprinted past him, and Bruno Labbadia, then a beautiful Kaiserslautern player, countered Dahlmann's Duz offer distant "Oh, you know.
.
. "
Premiere actually set new standards and over the years has become the most important partner of the Bundesliga.
Other pay TV platforms (DF1, Arena, Telekom) failed because of the top dog.
The best from public television went to Premiere: Günter-Peter Ploog, Fritz von Thurn und Taxis, and later Marcel Reif.
Sky will celebrate its anniversary on Tuesday from 3:30 p.m. with Grandes Thurn and Taxis and Beckmann on the free-to-air branch Sky Sport News.
* tz.de is an offer from the Ippen Digital Network
