In September, the team of Barátok közt celebrated the production of the 5,000^th episode

Right now Grundy UFA has triple cause for celebration: on 4 December RTL Klub broadcast the 5,000th episode of Barátok közt, while Unter Uns celebrated its 15th anniversary on 28 November and Verbotene Liebe aired its 3,500th episode in early November. This shows that the soaps are not only popular, but that their success is reliable and long-lived. “That is the art we’ve mastered,” says Rainer Wemcken, Managing Director of Grundy UFA in an interview with RTLGroup.com. “The longer a series runs, the easier it becomes to market – and that is our goal.” To achieve this, the series’ makers must take particular care to avoid lapsing into a routine. “Although we are essentially involved in industrial series production here, creativity is demanded on a daily basis,” explains Wemcken.

This is important for another reason as well. There are now ten daily series in the German TV market alone. Most of them air during access prime time, that means between 17:30 and 20:15. “Naturally, there is a danger of oversaturation,” explains Wemcken. “That’s why we place such an emphasis on the various particularities of our formats. Verbotene Liebe, for instance, is deliberately a bit unrealistic.”

Shooting of Verbotene Liebe

Producing and preserving the uniqueness of all the different soaps over time requires not only a well thought-out plan, but also a highly motivated team and smoothly functioning logistics – and Grundy UFA has all but perfected the process of industrial series production. “Of course there is no secret formula that tells you exactly how everything works,” jokes Wemcken. “We’re not a beverage factory, where you have a specific recipe that spells out how it’s done.” Each soap has its very own style, a recurrent theme and its own way of telling the characters’ stories. “The most important thing is to use the characters to tell stories that interest people while also exploring problems that preoccupy people,” Wemcken explains. “To do so you have to stay close to your target audience, pick up on trends and even set trends yourself sometimes.”

As a result, the soaps are always shifting and changing – new topics are constantly being discovered, new problems addressed. Sometimes a cast member leaves the soap, or a new person joins the cast, which opens up new narrative options for the authors. In 1992, Gute Zeiten – Schlechte Zeiten launched with a large cast and an accordingly large number of plot strands. “Nowadays we will usually focus on a single strong character at the beginning of a series, like Manu Berlett in Eine wie keine or Diana in Alles was zählt. The other characters and the plot are then developed over time,” says Wemcken.

The nearly 18-year history of daily soaps in Germany is evident in the evolution of the narrative structure, but also in changes that have occurred in production over recent years. Production timing is still very tight – every day, at least one new episode has to be completed for each of the seven series. New technology standards in particular have opened up greater creative freedom. HD technology gives the footage a more cinematic overall look and it has also greatly simplified post-processing. “This means that we are producing even faster now than we used to,” reports Rainer Wemcken. “For Unter Uns, we now produce eight episodes a week instead of just five as in the past.”

Claudelle Deckert, Anna Julia Kapfelsperger and Isabell Hertel celebrating
Unter uns’ 15^th anniversary

The entire production process for an episode – from the initial idea to the day it is aired – takes about three months on average. First, a larger plot spanning several months is determined. This overarching plot is then broken down into weekly strands and then into daily episodes, after which it is shot. Finally, these plot strands are cut apart, combined with other and edited into an episode. “That is precisely what distinguishes us, apart from the shooting itself – the industrial standards we bring to production,” says Wemcken. Also, he explains, there is now more of an emphasis on better care and training for the cast members. “We now have a lot more coaches than ten years ago.”

And soaps are now at home in the online realm as well. “Daily soaps are among the most requested formats on the broadcasters’ various catch-up and video-on-demand sites,” Wemcken is happy to report. “On RTL Now for instance, users can preview the upcoming episode for a small fee – and plenty of people actually do so.” Grundy UFA also develops Web series that are not exactly like soaps but do have similarities. The Pietshow, which the company produces for the German social networks StudiVZ and MeinVZ, is one of Germany’s most popular Web series, generating over three million video views to date. The series has even been nominated for a Digital Emmy. “Given the Pietshow’s success, we are obviously entertaining some ambitions in this area. But you always need a partner for the financing, too,” says Wemcken. “But we have nothing new planned at the moment.”

Grundy UFA in Figures (as of 1 December 2009)

• Gute Zeiten – Schlechte Zeiten (Good Times, Bad Times; RTL Television)
  Launched: 1992
  Number of episodes: 4380
  Average audience share (14 to 49 – Oct 2009): 21.0 per cent
  
• Unter Uns (RTL Television)
  Launched: 1994
  Number of episodes: 3729
  Average audience share (14 to 49 – Oct 2009): 16.6 per cent
  
• Verbotene Liebe (ARD)
  Launch: 1995
  Number of episodes: 3516
  Average audience share (total audience – Oct 2009): 11.8 per cent
  
• Alles was zählt (RTL Television)
  Launch: 2006
  Number of episodes: 817
  Average audience share (14 to 49 – Oct 2009): 16.2 per cent
  
• Alisa - Folge deinem Herzen (ZDF)
  Launch: 2009
  Number of episodes: 183
  Average audience share (total audience – Oct 2009): 15.1 per cent
  
• Eine wie keine (Sat.1)
  Launch: 2009
  Number of episodes: 12
  Average audience share: Not available, yet.
  
• Barátok Közt (RTL Klub)
  Launch: 1998
  Number of episodes: 4994
  Average audience share (18 to 49 – Oct 2009): 40.4 per cent.