2. January 2014
by SchspIN
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For Heaven’s Sake, Look at the Ratings!

UM HIMMELS WILLEN (For Heaven’s Sake, a series on ARD, one of Germany’s public-service broadcasters) was Germany’s most successful TV series in 2013, just like in the year before. On average 6.6 Mio. people watched each episode, in 2012 it were 7.1 Mio. Most successful series is defined by the extrapolated supposedly highest mean TV audience numbers.
Actually my plan was to analyse the complete series of 156 episodes in 12 seasons, behind the camera (6-sections-check) and in front of it (main and supporting casts), but unfortunately the data that is publically available is rather incomplete. So instead let’s ponder on TV ratings instead. They exist, but they should not be taken too seriously.

What do we need these ratings for? Do they help us choose a film to watch, or do they help the broadcasters to assemble their programmes? Does a show get better or worse through (the knowledge of) ratings? Does the future of a series depend on it? Or are they a measure for the popularity of a show, the people in it or the makers? Are they for checking the effects of PR campaings? Are they fundamental for selling air time for advertising? Are they needed to distribution the television licence fees? Are good ratings a matter of prestige for broadcasting companies and heads of programming? And are they correct numbers?
How do ratings influence future viewings? What if I find out how many people allegedly watched a programme that I also watched and liked? Will I like it even better and feel reassured in my TV taste? What if only few people watched ,my’ programme, and the reviews were bad? If it turns out that only people younger than 14 and older than 60 watched it? Will that make me feel bad so that I would pretend not to have liked it or to have watched something else? („only saw it very briefly while switching channels“)
Or the other way around: Will I continue watching a series that I disliked but that got good ratings and suddenly start to become a fan? Do I need „Likes“ for my orientation? Are ratings all about money?

Sign on a café in Berlin: Like us on the facebook – and get a free Espresso

Some years back I told a friend about the Argentinian feature film EL ABRAZO PARTIDO (director: Daniel Burman) that I had seen in the competition of the Berlin International Film Festival. My friend wanted to look it up in some film rating index, which – according to him – contained „all important and good films“, but not El Abrazo Partido. So it could not really be a good film. Indeed? Sometimes the TV Ratings business reminds me of this encounter. If something gets low ratings it can’t be really good (mind you, ever so often when a film on a public channel gets good ratings people say „well, but it was only people over 60 that watched it“ – so they would be a less good audience?)

Having said that I’d like to stress my doubts that the figures published as TV ratings correlate to the actual number of people watching. They are but estimates, the GfK’s extrapolations of the rate measurement results from 5,000 households with a total of 10,500 persons, of the use of television, or rather the switching-on of TV sets.

Are the 5.000 households an adaqute sample representating the approximately 78 mio. people older than 3 in Germany?
Are the transmitted results correct, i.e. does rate measurement box switched on correspond with having watched programme?
Do the conclusions drawn from the extrapolated data make sense?
Are there interest groups and lobby organizations for television audiences, just like they exist for public transport and German rail? (granted, that is a different topic)

In digital times TV shows are not only watched on television. However, the GfK disregards those among the 10.500 people that watch a programme on the internet, or record it for later use, or watch it in the media centers of the broadcasters, or watch it at a friend’s house or in a pub. How about those that switch on the telly and the measurement box but are not watching the screen but are on the phone in another room, do the washing-up, play on the x-box, doze off on the settee? Are they rateable audience? And what about those that cheat a little bit about their TV watching?

Now, regarding the evaluation and interpretation of TV ratings let’s look at an example from December. On the 27th Sat1 showed a gala show for the birthday of actor / director Til Schweiger (he turned 50 on Dec. 19), the following day the ratings were published. This is what the internet magazine DWDL wrote (and it’s in German but I will translate it): Little Interest in the Birthday of Til Schweiger. The audience certainly did not wait for this. “Happy Birthday – Til Schweiger” was only watched by 1,49 million, which only adds up to grotty 5,0 percent. It did not really look brighter in the target audience. Only 820.000 wanted to celebrate the actor’s birthday with Sat!. The grotty share in market of 7,6 percent for those between 14 and 49 certainly won’t call for a celebration today in Unterföhring“ (that’s the small place in the south of Germany where the station Sat1 is located).
Why so much malice? Does the author draw a personal pleasure from a show getting a smaller audience than anticipated and hoped for? But let’s have a look at the news on media news site MEEDIA of the same day, here we find the following information, on the page with the heading „Birthday show for Til Schweiger is a total Flop“: Among other smaller stations SUPER RTL was convincing. “Asterix“ allures more than a million viewers to Super RTL. (…) 1.13 mio. people watched „Asterix and the Big Fight“ that’s a good 3.6 %. 3.6 % are good and 5 % are grotty – 1.49 mio. is a Flop whereas 1.13 mio. are convincing?

To better understand numbers like these here are some more: Cologne has 1.024 mio. inhabitants, at the 2013 German general election the Pirate Party were elected by nearly 960,000 people, that’s grotty 2.2 percent of the cast votes. The second most successful German feature film of 2012 – CLOUD ATLAS – sold 1.14 mio. tickets. 1.49 mio. spectators will have visited the Hamburger Schauspielhaus (Germany’s largest theatre) after 1,240 sold-out performances. So a TV audience of 1.49 mio. is not really dazzling but certainly not negligible.

TV are among other things also influenced by the TV slot, by chance and by bad luck. A film or documentary, a series or report, that are scheduled for a sunday night at 8.15 p.m. are starting badly because that is the time of the TATORT (Germany’s most popular crime series), so a great part of the audience would probably watch that no matter what. Then the image of a channel will probably have an effect. And Chance. My film is on at 8.15 p.m. on a week day, things look good, no unusual competition, but then suddenly something happens politically so there are newsflashes and special coverage on TV. Or maybe a Royal Baby is born, or a new pope elected, or there is a football match being covered. In 2013 the television programme with the highest rationgs was the men’s football champions league final, more than 21 mio. watched that on ZDF. It was only determined 4 weeks before in the semi-finals that there would be two German teams in the final, at which point most TV channels would have set their programmes, which then obviously had less chances of a large audience.
On a side note: Thomas Bellut (director general of the ZDF) justified the 50 mio. € that the ZDF paid for one year’s champions league broadcasting (which were broadcast on free TV station Sat1 up to then) especially with wanting to attract new and younger audiences for the HEUTE JOURNAL (a news magazine) that would be broadcast during half-time. Apparently judging from the ratings this plan has come off partially, but maybe it’s just that viewers with the rate measuring boxes left them on during the heute journal but went to the bathroom, or to the kitchen to get more beer, or they turned down the sound and analyzed the first half of the match.
And then there’s also bad luck. The bad luck of hearing of a great show, film or episode too late, after it had already been on, being told by friends who had seen and recommended it. But this sort of bad luck is not so bad any more as in the old day because we have the internet. And of course there are repeats.

Striving for the highest ratings and fighting other channels and the effects this has on programme and people is shown in a vivid, amusing and bitter way in the third season of the Danish TV series BORGEN: the new, hip and young head of programming Alexander Hjort subordinates everything to the pursuit of high TV rates and popularity and forces Torben Friis, head of news, to turn the news broadcasts into some sort of spectacle. But that is a different topic.

Of course as an actress I am very happy when a film or series that I am is well received and watched by masses. Just as I am happy when some series’ episode that I enjoy as part of the audience is popular and will continue to be produced and broadcast. But for that I – and hopefully the broadcasters – don’t need the ratings. I am also quite sympathetic with great shows that are broadcast on less popular channels and therefore don’t get large audiences (according to the ratings). This goes for quite a number of series being shown on arte (BORGEN, THE SLAP, TOP OF THE LAKE) which all deserve ratings like TATORT, men’s football, FARMER WANTS A WIFE or I’M A CELEBRITY.

But let’s look at another example that shows the absurdity of the ratings quite well: DER TATORTREINIGER (the crime scene cleanup man). This is a funny series produced in the north of Germany by NDR. There were 4 episodes originally that were only seen by 50.000 viewers on average or even less. Of course it has to be taken into account that the episodes were first broadcast between December 23rd and 27th 2011, each time between 3.30 and 5.30 a.m. (!), and that they were hardly advertised. The same goes for the second round of screenings a few days later, episode 1 and 2 were shown on Wednesday Jan. 4 and thursday Jan. 5 2012 around 10.30 p.m., this was announced in a press release two days earlier (The Tatortreiniger with Bjarne Mädel). Episodes 3 and 4 weren’t shown again. Bad TV slots and poor PR. Despite all this a few people watched and loved it, and the Tatortreiniger was nominated for the Grimme Preis (important German TV award) and won in various categories in 2012 and 2013. Now the makers of the show were happy and more episodes were produced, – and broadcast! And today we can read (in German) on the website of the NDR „The Tatortreiniger enthuses both the audience and the critics“ – and this in spite of the poor treatment by the NDR itself, and despite poor ratings.

Maybe the fixation on ratings is a remains from the early days of television when perhaps the means for measuring audience were copied from theatre and cinema. Maybe it is some sort of sign of nostalgic longing for times when there were only two TV channles and the audience and ist choices were managable. Or it has to do with higher further better, with larger and larger viewer numbers – instead of just developing a diverse choice for everybody.
Klaus Pierwoß who was the successful director of Bremen Theater for many years once commented on an audience survey. Yes, so these are the preferences of the audience. If we abide by them we may only show operettas. But the theatre has other duties.
By the way, just recently the ZDF terminated two successful high-rated series, the LANDARZT (country doctor) and the FORSTHAUS FALKENAU (forester’s house Falkenau). They are to be replaced by crime series. But that is a different topic.

What is really strange is that basically we all doubt the rating measurements, don’t we? Yet at the same time we believe in them, they are the state of affairs, the golden calf of the industry. Reaching back to „For Heaven’s Sake“: „No, I am not superstitious, but I heard that superstitions also work if you don’t believe in them.“
TV ratings exist, but they should not be taken too seriously.

29. December 2013
by SchspIN
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Review 2013: Talk on the Radio

There is a weekly radio show on the German station Deutschlandradio Kultur, every saturday from 9 to 11 a.m. called Radiofeuilleton – Im Gespräch (Conversations). This is a show with one or two expert guests in the studio and listeners calling in on changing topics. Once before on Sept. 8 I blogged on this show (Listening to the Radio), yesterday they broadcast the last show of 2013, so let’s look back on the whole year with 52 shows today.
The variety of topics with regularly switching male and female presenters is big, however the guest list is a bit more onesided: more than half the shows only had male guests (27 of 52), an all-female panel occured five times (approx. 10 %). 20 shows, this is less than 40 %, had male and female experts.

Of course there is no need for a gender parity on each show, but overall, looking on a year’s programmes, such an imbalance does seem quite remarkable (but not unique of course, considering the guest lists of talk shows on German TV, and possibly also in other countries), and not a positive signal. What might be the reasons? Are there really so many topics that only male experts can talk about? Is it just customary to mainly invite men, or is it thoughtlessness? Were female experts that had been invited simply reluctant to go on air? This summer I wrote to the people behind the show, I was promised an answer, but up to now I have not received it. Unfortunately.
Well, instead of speculating on possible reasons let’s just have a look at the topics of the shows with men-only– and women-only-panels. I have marked the shows with only one guest instead of two in red, not knowing whether only one person was invited or the second person had declined.

Topics of shows without men:

What changes should be due in family policy?
Allergies in Spring
Town vs. Country Life
A slap to the soul: how to deal with insults
Abolishing prostitution – in favour or against?

Topics of shows without women:

Broadcast Receiving Licence and Digitalization – what is the Future of Public Broadcasting?
Living in a sustainable Manner – a Self-Deception?
Believing in Globules – how effective is Homeopathy?
What will the Cinema’s Future be like?
Water – drink it or speculate with it
The Euro €€
Birds and Bird Watching
Planned Obsolence in Production
From Kant to Cosmos – The Universe
Running, how to do it
Big Data – Chances and Risks
Data Security in Times of Prism and Tempora
Problems with Maths
Work until you drop
Human Guinea Pigs? Pharmaceutical tests
Musical Encouragement in Germany
National Election 2013
How ill is our medical scheme?
The Internet – a safe Place for All?
Asylum Politics and Refugees
Rent Explosions, Gentrification, Vacancy: Living in Germany
Remembrance and Remembering – but how?
Inheriting and Bequeathing without Trouble
The Christmas Season – how much Consumption can we afford?
The Power of Music
Changing Horses in a Professional Career, how do you do it?
All you ever wanted to know about old Sayings and Proverbs

Let’s hope looking back on 2014 will be quite different.

5. December 2013
by SchspIN
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Well done, Sister Equity!

Equity UK’s Jean Rogers on Equal Representation

A few weeks ago the French La Charte pour l’Égalité entre les Femmes et les Hommes dans le Secteur du Cinéma was signed (Vive la Nouvelle Révolution du Cinéma!), the effects of which will hopefully become apparent in the near future. A few years ago British actors’ union Equity launched a Viewers’ Petition for Equal Representation of Women in Film and Television Drama with the aim to abolish the 2:1 dominance of male over female roles on British television, and an even worse ratio for films, and also to fight the almost non-existent portrayal of the older woman. How did this petition come about and has it begun showing effects already? I am very happy to have been able to interview Equity’s Jean Rogers on these and many more questions.

Jean Rogers is a British actress, born just outside London. Her work in front of the camera includes THE PEACEMAKER, THE LAZARUS CHILD, more than 10 years as Dolly Skilbeck in ITV’s EMMERDALE and presenting a BBC TV Schools’ programme for 7 year olds called WATCH. She has appeared regularly on British stages e.g. the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, theYork Theatre Royal, two seasons with the Chichester Festival Theatre and was a founder member of Sir Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre. In radio she clocked up over a thousand broadcasts for the BBC playing boys and girls, POETRY CORNER and LISTEN WITH MOTHER. Her recent work was in SNOW WHITE playing the wicked queen in a Christmas pantomime.
Jean has been an elected Councillor of the actors’ and performers’ union Equity for nearly twenty years and since 2004 Vice President. [Weiterlesen – Read On]

20. November 2013
by SchspIN
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Tis Early Practice Only …

“Tis early practice only makes the master.” Discussing possible effects a strong gender imbalance in film and television may have on a young audience (thoughts from London, Los Angeles and Berlin), the Saure Gurke / Pickled Cucumber Award and female lawyers.

How do readers find their way to SchspIN? Well, some come directly or via link on another website or because they follow the blog (top right: there’s a link Blog abonnieren / Follow Blog via Email), and some are directed here by search engines.
The other day a reader googled “Happy birthday Bilder für Männer” (happy birthday pictures for men) and another “junge fraulein und elder man” (young fraeulein and elder man) – so much for search engines 🙂 . Quite regularly people search for Sesamstraße (the German version of Sesame Street) or protagonists from that show and are directed to this article: Happy Birthday, German Sesame Street! which I wrote a few months ago on the occasion of the 40th birthday of the Sesamstraße about the immense male majority among characters, puppets and monsters on the show. Does growing up with children’s programmes without or with hardly any female characters result in the audience (and especially those ending up in decision-making positions) not noticing the immense female minority of women in fictional and non-fictional TV as adults?

For other impacts this imbalance may have, read the article “If she can’t see it, she can’t be it: why media representation matters“ (Guardian, Nov. 12) by London-based freelance filmmaker and creative communications professional Rebecca Brand.

Rebecca Brand (Foto: Daniella Cesarei)

She argues: Whether we like to admit it or not, the characters who inhabit our screen stories – who we fall in love with, laugh with, cry with, and grow older with – have an impact on our lives. They help to shape who we are, who we aspire to be, and how we view the world around us. That’s why representation in mainstream media matters. (…) What message are we giving those impressionable minds about women? And how might we be cutting the ambitions of little girls short before they’ve even had the chance to develop properly?
If girls grow up, watching a clear male majority on TV as the norm – and at the same time being surrounded by a pink princess monoculture created by the toy and sweets industry, how can they ever start to dream of becoming a pirate, a secret agent, a farmer, a nuclear physisist, a car race driver or an inventer? And how can boys image girls to be capable of more than dressing in pink and being rescued?
Rebecca Brand is currently working on a documentary on the “audacious and provocative protest against the world’s attempts to sexualise and commodify childhood, by award-winning performance artist Bryony Kimmings and her nine-year-old niece Taylor.” The title of the project is “Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model” and it is curently still in the financing phase.

In the USA, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, founded by actress Geena Davis in 2004, is also concerned about the appaling imbalance in gender representation. “The Institute is uniquely positioned to spotlight gender inequalities at every media and entertainment company through cutting-edge research, education, training, strategic guidance and advocacy programs.” A study of about 400 G, PG, PG-13, and R-Rated movies showed a ratio of 3 males to 1 female part. With its initiatives the institute aims at changing female portrayals and gender stereotypes in children’s media and entertainment.

Similar topics were also discussed at the 36th autumn meeting of media women from ARD and ZDF (the two main German public TV channels), ORF (Austrian public broadcaster) and Swiss broadcasting corporation, who met in early november in Berlin, as guests of their female colleagues at RBB (public service TV and radio Berlin Brandenburg) and Deutschlandradio (German Radio, a public broadcaster). “What is the role women play in public service stations? How are we women shown? What has changed for the better in the last years?”
And like every year, they awared the Saure Gurke (pickled cucumber), a negative prize for TV programmes:

that don’t include women
that define women by their bodies
that force overidealizing rolemodels upon the audience

And the winner in 2013 is: KALTER ENGEL (Cold Angel), the latest Tatort from Erfurt (Tatort / Crime Scene is the most successful fictional programme on German TV, approximately 40 new 90 min. films every year, taking place in a number of towns – this one in Erfurt). The Jury justified their decision by saying “Here we encounter female characters that we have come to know and love in 40 years of Tatort: the saint, the whore, the dictatoral boss and a murder victim that is to blame for her death. Even a Tatort of today can belong very much to the past!”

Now let’s just imagine there was also a junior award – let’s call it the Gherkin – for programmes for children that comply with the award’s standards. Well, then I would suggest giving it to an episode from Deutschlandradio Kultur’s daily children’s programme Kakadu (cockatoo): Arrested by the Police – what happens next? from Nov 2, 2013 (author: Corinna Thaon, contributing editor: Claudia König-Suckel). (Edit 2018: the page is not online any more).

Ein Cornichon für den Kakadu? – A Gherkin for the Cockatoo?

So what was that about?

Charlie is caught by the police while commiting his 15th burglary. But what happens to a culprit after that? Under our rule of law people that breach the law are punished. But they have to be treated in a fair way. After the committing of a crime has been proofen by the prosecution and the police, the accused goes on trial.

It was a very well done programme, some children and a lawyer explained terms like trial, punishment and defence from their points of view and a trial was reenacted. So far so good – were it not for the fact that there were ONLY ONLY ONLY men appearing in the trial. A male lawyer, a male prosecutor, a mal judge and even a male clerk are mentioned. The trial is reenacted by an actor (Stefan Kaminski) who speaks all the parts: the accused, the solicitor, the procecutor, the lawyer and a witness.
The host of the show – Ulrike Jährling – said at the end: “now this was a just and fair discovery day today“, but it wasn’t really just and fair genderwise, and it is not in the least depicting the reality of the German judical system, which is not a “men only” world.

Just some facts to underline this: Law is the 4th favourite subject among female students in Germany, and the 5th favourite among the males. The share of women among the students starting to study it has risen from 49 to 57 % in the last years.
Since 2009 the German Federal Minister of Justice has been Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP – Liberal Party).
Last month an article by Annette Ramelsberger was published in the magazine of the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Issue 40/2013, Oct. 7), titled Die neue Rechtsordnung / “The new legal order”, in which she wrote “For centuries the Justice was firmly in the hands of men. Now women are moving to the top and they are changing the system thoroughly. Today more female than male judges are newly employed,as well as more female than male prosecutors. In the prosecution women hold the majority already.” There is still a majority of male judges, but there’s a female majority already among the under 40s. “Only one number has not changed: 90 % of the accused are men.”

In the light of these facts it is quite sad to have a radio programme for children that portrays the whole law world as a man’s world. How many girls listening to the Kakadu episode will have thought: “Yes, justify! I want to be a prosecutor when I grow up!”?

P.S.: A short comment on today’s title which of course is a quote from Wilhelm Tell / -William Tell by Friedrich Schiller (1804). From Act III Scene 1 (Translated by Theodore Martin)

Court before TELL’S house. TELL with an axe. HEDWIG engaged in her domestic duties. The children WALTER and WILHELM in the background playing with a little cross-bow.

HEDWIG.   The boys begin to use the bow betimes.
TELL.   ‘Tis early practice only makes the master.
HEDWIG.   Ah! Would to heaven they never learnt the art!

Hedwig is talking of the art of weaponry, but this quote can probably be easily transferred to today’s media and gherkin-situations.

31. October 2013
by SchspIN
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Interview: Wellywood Woman & Le Deuxième Regard

Interview: Wellywood Woman & Le Deuxième Regard

Last week I wrote about the French Charter for Equality among Women and Men in the Film Sector and wondered about the situation of the German Film industry under a similar document of commitment (Vive la Nouvelle Révolution du C inéma!).
Today I am very happy that for the first time I can welcome a guest to SchspIN: Marian Evans from New Zealand, published an interview with Bérénice Vincent of Le Deuxième Regard, the French group who initiated the Charter on her blog Wellywood Woman.
Marian Evans, is a writer, activist and lawyer, and founder of the Development Project. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters.
Bérénice Vincent is a lawyer and is currently working for Legal & Business Affairs of Wild Bunch, an independent Paris-based European film distribution and production services company. She is president of Le Deuxième Regard.

Marian Evans (Wellywood Woman) und Bérénice Vincent (Le Deuxième Regard)

Marian kindly lets me use her interview with Bérénice so now there is a German version available. Thank you very much, Marian!

“It was a beautiful day. Screen Daily reported that France has launched a five-point gender equality charter for its film industry, put together by Le Deuxième Regard, a Paris-based ‘lobby’ (read ‘activist’) group founded by Bérénice Vincent, Delphyne Besse and Julie Billy, who will circulate it for signature, to all segments of the industry.
This charter is, I think, unique. Feminists often work behind the scenes for change. But has a feminist group ever initiated and helped to write a charter that key government ministers and industry figures signed in support, in the arts or any other context?
From here, the charter’s creation and use seems like a brilliant activist strategy because the charter hasn’t had to go through a long legal process, as a court action or piece of legislation. It appears to have cost the taxpayer nothing. Nevertheless, its formality and the quality of the signatories give it real heft.
Of course, I wanted to interview Le Deuxième Regard. And was thrilled when its president Bérénice Vincent agreed.”

For the original English version of the interview please turn directly to the Wellywood Woman blog:
Charte de l’Egalité for French Film Industry: Feminists Make History

25. October 2013
by SchspIN
4 Comments

Vive la Nouvelle Révolution du Cinéma!

Vive la Nouvelle Révolution du Cinéma!

After the French Revolution 1789-1799, the invention of the cinematograph by the Lumière brothers in 1890 and the new women’s movement of the 1970s, France is once again very active in cracking old structures and innovating the film industry.

The Charter for Equality among Women and Men in the Film Sector

Paris, October 10, 2013. Aurélie Filippetti (Minister for Culture and Communications Minister) and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem (Minister for Women’s Rights / Government Spokesperson) signed La Charte pour l’Égalité entre les Femmes et les Hommes dans le Secteur du Cinéma, in the presence of Véronique Cayla (President of Arte France), Frédérique Bredin (President of the state film funding body CNC) and Bérénice Vincent (President of Le Deuxième Regard).
Le Deuxième Regard (The Second Vision, a little hint at Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical benchmark „Le Deuxième Sexe“) was founded in March 2013 by the fhree Paris based female filmmakers Bérénice Vincent, Delphyne Besse and Julie Billy. They presented a number of ideas to the French Minister for Culture, ideas on how to increase the number of women in the film industry and how to improve their situation. Among these ideas was the draft of a Charter, the one that was signed this month, as a declaration of intent, an appeal and a commitment.
This did not come out of the blue of course. Things started happening in June when the senate (= the French Upper House) published the report „La place des femmes dans l’art et la culture: le temps est venu de passer aux actes“ / “The Place of Women in Art and Culture: time has come to act”. This study addresses the imbalance in the cultural sector and labels three main problems: 1. holding on to gender stereotypes in cultural context, 2. a relative invisibility of female artists (their absence from retrospectives, festivals, awards) and 3. male dominance in strategically important positions.
These are the main issues of the Charter:

The signatories pledge to

gender their statistics, in order to isolate today’s problems and to participate in a collective consideration of the situation of the place of women in film today
secure equal representation of men and women in their decision-making committees
stimulate cinematographic creativity by encouraging projects that overturn the traditional representation of women and men
sentizise their personel on equality issues, especially by fighting stereotypes
secure equal payment for women and men.

We can look forward to finding out who else from the French film industry will join this pledge, since Le Deuxième Regard will start to contact some 50 key corporations, organizations and festivals. And we can look forward to check the possible changes to the current situation in a year’s time. How seriously will these commitments be taken? Will there be a change in the presentation of men and women in the cinema and on television, will there be more work for actresses and female directors?
In any case, this Chater is an extraordinary measure that exceeds merely demanding the fulfillment of a preset quota, it calls for an engaging preoccupation with stereotypes and clichés, and on top this with addresses an unpleasant situation that is not being talked about in public a great deal with its call for “equal payment”.
Do we need something like this Charter in Germany? Well, we will really only be able to answer that question after we have evaluated some reliable statistics. After we know how many men and how many women exist in the industry, how many are being trained and find work, what are the productions they work in, how they are being paid, which awards and grants they win and get, and after we get the break-downs on how the told stories are cast – then as a next step we can see if things are alright or if we need to talk about causes, consequences and possible countermeasures and start implementing the other four demands of the Charter.

The State promotes the actual Implementation of Equality

This is a quote from the Grundgesetz, the German constitution (article 3 (2) GG). So based on this regional ministries and funding bodies could start by abiding to the standards of the Charter, and by inviting national film schools, public TV broadcasting corporations, publically funded festivals and film productions to pledge to the agreement as well. Other organisations from the industry (e.g. unions) and private broadcasting corporations could follow. Just as a theoretical thought.

As far as Item 1 – the genderized statistics – is concerned, this would not be something new, but something that has been neglected quite a bit. Two detailed investigations are as old as 10 years:
In 2004 the Kulturrat (cultural council, a central association) published the survey „Women in Art and Culture II, 1995 – 2000“. 10 of the 92 pages deal with the film industry.
And in 2002 Angela Haardt and the Friends of the German Cinematheque (now: Arsenal, Institute for Film and Video Art) published a documentation of: „So Far and No Further: Hearing on the Situation of Women in the Film Professions Directing, Cinematography, Sound and Composition“.
I have not been able so far to find a systematic analysis of the casts of German cinema and TV productions.

The second item on the Charter – the composition of decision making bodies – is on the agenda in Germany already, there is a large number of committees and juries with female members, although their represantation is sometimes way below 50 %, and boards – also from unions etc. – are occasionally quite male dominated, so it does not come as a big surprise that they don’t really push forward discussions on the situation of female filmmakers. And furthermore, an equal representation does not automatically solve all problems, as we can see from this French example:
The funding committees of the CNC (Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée) show a nearly balanced set-up by gender, nonetheless in 2012 only a quarter of the funded feature film debuts were directed by women, and this despite the fact that the output of male and female directors at La Fémis, the French State Film School for Image and Sound, is split evenly.
This is something I also found when I look at two national film funding bodies and their decisions in 2012: the BKM, the Federal Appointee for Culture and Media, and the FFA, the German Federal Film Board. By the way, there is no national Minstry for Culture in the federal government since according to the German constitution, culture and education are regional responsibilities.
So, BKM and FFA, both have balanced juries: the BKM’s has 4 women and 5 men, and the FFA’s 6 each. Last year the BKM funded 13 full lenth feature films with a total of 2,7 Mi. €, and the FFA granted funding for the productio of 49 films, with a total of 15,9 Mio. € (often as a loan). I could not find genderized statistics on how many directors had applied for funding.

Films by male directors received the bigger part of the funding, on top of this female directors on average received some 12 % less money per film.
As I mentioned cultural issues are dealt with by the regions, so the film funding by the different Länder (= regional states) plays a major part. The only summarized and genderized statistics on this are old, they are from the already mentioned survey „Women in Art and Culture II, 1995-2000“, that unfortunately does not distinguish between documentaries and feature films.
Here we see two distinct phenomena: number one, that the financial share for female directors is lower than their share of the number of funded films, for example from the regional funding in Hamburg films by female directors make up 28 % of the funded projects, but in total they only received 15 % of the €€. And number two: half the regional agencies only give 20 % or less of the total funding sums to films by female directors.
I could not find any mention on the (genderized) composition of the juries, but it was stated that in 11 (of 16) Länder (regions) the film funding institutions are led by men. Also again I could not find the numbers for the total amout of film projects that applied for funding, and even less genderized information on their directors.
Again (as seen in the BKM-FFA-comparison) the share of women is bigger when the funding is smaller. In Bremen female directors received 45 % of 47.9000 €, in Schleswig-Holstein they received 37 % of 134.700 € – on the other hand in Bavaria only 9 % of 4,05 Mio. € and in North Rhine Westphalia only 15 of 6,85 Mio. € went to projects with female directors.

Prizes and awards can be considered as another type of film funding, regarding this in the mentioned survey we find this statement: „Film prizes given to women were very often small or without prize money, awards that were different, i.e. with prize money, were mostly awards for actresses.“
Well, all these findings are of course only snap-shots. And again loads of questions arise: what was the funding like in the years before and after the study? Are there changes? How many female and male directors actually work in the industry? What was the directors’gender ration for all films that applied for funding, and indeed for all films that were produced? What’s the distribution by age and gender among directors? Is the female/male ratio the same for each age group or do we find a buldge of men in the older generations? How many women and men attend and finishi the film schools each year?
On this, the report (Women in Art and Cuture II, 1995-2000“ we read: “Whereas the share of women was 44 % in 1998 as in 1995, it rose via 47 % (1999) to 53 % (2000)“. (this is for the field of study „Performing Art, Filma and Television, Dramatics“), and the comittee on cultural affairs of the Berlin regional parliament stated on April 11 in 2005: „At all artistic university of Berlin (UdK, KHB, HfS and HfM) the share of female students was 58 – 59 % in the autumn of 2002, 2003 and 2004“ when the university courses started. Genderized statitstics on the students according to the branch of study for the national film universities were not given.
So maybe female directors are actually underrepresented when they only account for one fifth of the 50 top grossing German films of 2012. Maybe their share in their profession is larger than the 24 % in their union and in the data base of crew united (please refer to “Give me Art, Give me Money” Female Filmmakers Part 1: Behind the Camera for further information). At this point we just don’t know.

We don’t really talk about money

Item 5 of the Paris Charter with it’s call for equal pay actually breaks the unwritten law that no one speaks about wages in public. I don’t know of any detailed evaluations of salaries in the film industry. In public conversations and of course in the tabloids you sometimes hear and read of the top earning people in the business. Behind closed doors you sometimes find out about unequal pay, of a slope not only when you compare typical male and female crew positions but also within one crew department, and of course in front of the camera. Agents talk about differently paid jobs for acting beginners depending on their gender, the same sometimes goes for leads in TV series, and we even find sometimes on an audition call-out for a new TV show.
Yes of course, all these can be the exceptions to the equal pay rule. We will only know for certain when serious research is being done. In any case, it might be a good idea for professional organizations / unions to start or to once again engage in this topic.
Last month negotiations were started on the renewal of the „Labour Agreement for Film and TV Technicians“ („Tarifvertrag für die auf Produktionsdauer beschäftigten Film- und Fernsehschaffenden“), the current is only valid until December 31. Maybe in the negociations the topic of possible gender-related wage discrimination will be brought up.
This is a chance that the acting union BFFS unfortunaltey missed in their negociations with the producers, the Produzentenallianz that was recently completed and that resulted in the first ever „Labour Agreement for Actresses and Actors“, which will come into effect on January 1, 2014.

In the „Preamble for Pay and Wages” (3.1.) we read:

The parties of this labour agreement are aware of the fact that actors and actresses are very distinct, individual artist personalities, that among other things are employed among other things based on their (…) gender (…) very differently and that have very different current values. (…)
It is the believe of the parties of this labour agreement that the practice within the film and TV industry, to individually negociate the basic pay (…) shall remain unchanged.

This describes the current situation, there are less parts for women, and they probably earn less. A statement along the lines of ,gender may not be a criterion for diverging role offers and different current values’ unfortunately cannot be found in the agreement
In another three years this document will be renegociated. So until then there is enough time for a thorough survey of the wage reality of actresses and actors in Germany.

9. October 2013
by SchspIN
2 Comments

Signs for Film Productions

A lot can be said in favour of teaching the basics of Sign Language to filmmakers: some important technical terms, numbers and the alphabet. As it is, some sort of signing is used quite frequently on most film sets, so why not use proper hand signs of the official Sign Languages.

Hermetically sealed?

Some weeks ago I read the (German) text Deaf People, the Cochlear Implant and Genocide in the German blog die ennomane. The author wrote (translated into English by SchspIN):

Deaf Culture differs considerably in one aspect from other subcultures: it is nearly hermetically sealed. A migrant in Germany can make an effort to learn German and is then able to communicate and integrate, a deaf person is unable to do so, since he or she cannot hear and has to rely on hand signing or written language. On the other hand hardly anyone will learn sign language without a cause.

I don’t agree. Continue Reading →

3. October 2013
by SchspIN
Comments Off on Turning SchspIN into a Better Place for English Readers – SchspIN wird gastfreundlicher

Turning SchspIN into a Better Place for English Readers – SchspIN wird gastfreundlicher

Deutsche Fassung nach der Englischen.

Author / Editor Marian Evans from New Zealand, who among other things publishes the blog Wellywood Women wrote to me some weeks back:
„Overall, I wonder whether you can make the layout of your blog a little clearer, because English speakers are going to have to find the page hugely attractive to move beyond a foreign language at the beginning, boring I know, but true.“
Yes indeed, how true. I was unhappy myself with only mentioning an English version at the top of a sometimes long German text with colourful pictures etc, and the lengthy scrolling that was required in order to read in English. So Marian’s comment led to me getting a little more into the world of html, until I found and mastered a solution. From now on the english versions have their own URL, and international readers can go there directly from the link incorporated in the „English version follows…“.
Today I have edited all blog texts in this manner (quite a few already!) and I hope that SchspIN is getting more attractive to English speaking readers this way. I am looking forward to more suggestions regarding the layout and of course more importantly to a lively discussion of the topics, since the phenomena I write about are universal of course.
By the way, [Weiterlesen – Read On]

18. September 2013
by SchspIN
1 Comment

Vier A-Festivals: 6-Gewerke-Check – Crew Count for 4 Film Festivals

English Version follows German.

Heute gibt es den 6-Gewerke-Check für die Wettbewerbsfilme von vier A-Festivals 2013: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (D), Festival de Cannes (F), Festival del Film Locarno (CH) und Mostra internazionale d’arte cinematografica di Venezia (I). Die insgesamt 79 aktuellen, internationalen Filmproduktionen sind überwiegend Spielfilme, in Locarno und Venedig liefen jeweils zwei Dokumentarfilme im Wettbewerb, und in Venedig außerdem der Animationsfilm Kaze Tachinu von Hayao Miyazaki. In Venedig gewann erstmals ein Dokumentarfilm den Goldenen Löwen: Sacro GRA (Regie: Gianfranco Rosi).
Wie leider zu erwarten gibt es bei allen vier Wettbewerben in den 6 Gewerken Regie, Drehbuch, Produzent/in, Kamera, Ton und Schnitt einen Männeranteil von mehr als 50 %, wobei die Festivals hierbei deutliche Unterschiede aufweisen. In keinem Wettbewerb erhielt der Film einer Regisseurin die Auszeichnung als Bester Film oder für die Beste Regie, kein Preis ging an eine Drehbuchautorin oder Kamerafrau.
In der Grafik sind noch zwei weitere Werte erfasst: der Mittelwert aus diesen 4 Filmfestivals für jedes Gewerk, das ist die Raute mit der gestrichelten Linie, und der Deutscher Filmpreis, d.h. der 6-Gewerke-Check für die 17 Filme, die in den Nominierungen zum Deutschen Filmpreis 2013 vorkamen, der vermutlich am ehesten vergleichbarer Wert aus Deutschland für kulturell bedeutsame Filme (ausführlicher beschrieben hier: Kunst oder Kommerz, wo arbeiten die Filmfrauen?). Bei Regie (30 %) und Schnitt (60 %) sieht es deutlich [Weiterlesen – Read On]

8. September 2013
by SchspIN
Comments Off on Listening to the Radio

Listening to the Radio

Listen to the Radio

More exciting than having Bananas for Breakfast every Day.

The German media organization ProQuote has just published some new data on men in the media: 98 % male chief editors in the print media, 82 % male TV bosses, 78 % chief editors in online media, 54 % CEOs in radio station departments (I hope I got the technical terms right).

So things are looking best in radio broadcasting and by the way, ,my’ saturday morning radio show „Conversations“ (Deutschlandradio Kultur) is presented equally by women and men. But when it comes to their guests, yet again we have the 2 to 1 ratio: twice as many men talk as experts to the radio audience. How come? And why? And does it make a difference?

On saturday mornings I quite often listen to a weekly radio show on Deutschlandradio Kultur (German Culture Radio, abbreviated DKultur) called „Im Gespräch“ (Conversations). There one or two guests who are experts on the day’s topic are invited, sometimes presenting opposing views, sometimes just coming from different and in a way complementary lines of work. Then there is a host and also listeners calling in or participating via emails with questions and comments.

The topics and discussions are (in my opinion) sometimes quite interesting, sometimes less so, sometimes the program is entertaining, other times quite annoying, as would be expected of a show like this.

In the last weeks for some reason I’ve had the impression that it’s only male guests being on air. The last female expert I can remember was talking about „dealing with insults“. Of course I may be wrong , also because I don’t tune in every week, so I decided to evaluate all shows that are still to be found on DRadio’s website, 28 in all between March 2 and September 7.

The show’s hosts are evenly balanced genderwise: 14 times Dieter Kassel and 14 times Gisela Steinhauer or Susanne Führer presented the Conversations. It’s a different ratio for the guests: a total of 14 female and 35 male experts were on the show, that’s a ration of 1:2.5. And yes, I was under the correct assumption for the last 12 weeks (from June 22 until yesterday): 18 men and only 2 women had been invited. One woman talked on said Dealing with Insults, and another (alongside a male guest) talked about Writing and Reading Poetry.

Looking at the first 12 shows (from March 2 to May 18) we get 9 female and 13 male guests. One show had only a female expert (Pollen alert! How to deal with allergies), 3 shows had only male experts (Bird watching, the Euro €€, Speculating with Water) and for all other shows a female and a male guest were invited to the studio. (I say „invited“, but I am only guessing. Of course I don’t know who was invited originally and who maybe declined or cancelled at short notice).

Of course I don’t want to start nitpicking or demanding some compulsory quota. I just find it interesting to look at public-law radio shows from a gender balance point of view. „Hey, the other day I learned something from the radio“ or „only yesterday I was listening to this controversial discussion on this topic on the radio“. And from whom do we learn something here? From men, mostly. Who have we been listening to in the discussion? Men, mostly. From women we learn how to deal with pollen attacks and insults. (ok, that’s a slight simplification). Men-only-shows are not a problem, but what if you have them over and over again?

This is how DKultur comments on the choice of guests:

We do not keep any statistics on the gender of our guest on saturday’s feature program „Conversations“. The participants are chosen on the basis of competence on the respective topics, gender equality or quotas are as unimportant for their being chosen as they are for the choice of listeners calling in to appear on the show.

If the gender of the guests does not matter, how come there is such a strong male dominance? 1:2,5 for the total of 28 different topics, topics that are on the whole not characterized by a notorious lack of women in training and practice. A mere coincidence? If the search for competent guests doesn’t result at some point in a more or less equal number of women and men, then maybe something is wrong about the way the guests are sought.

The Conversations show is broadcast every satuday between 9 and 11 a.m., I have listened to it many times while eating muesli for breakfast. Now of course I don’t keep any statistics on the fruit that I cut into my muesli. This is chosen entirely for reasons of adequacy, not on basis of a quota or fruit equality, which we may simply call variety. So this has led to me usually eating my muesli with bananas, at most with apples. I don’t want to say anything against bananas of course, they taste really good and of course are very suitable and nourishing food. But lately I have been choosing diverse fruit – muesli with red currants for example! Or with apricots – very delicious! And this has not led to a deficient breakfast, on the contrary. To conclude: it is not a must for a muesli to be eaten with added bananas.

DKultur is a public-law broadcasting station, financed through public broadcasting fees, and it holds a cultural and societal mandate. And this mandate can probably not be summarized as „Do let’s have first and foremost men on the shows“ or „do suggest that expertise is a man’s business“.

As an example let’s have a look at the computer-related topics of the last weeks, there was one show about the internet (sept. 7), one on data security (july 6) and one on Big Data (june 29) with a total of 5 male guests: a blogger, a media law person, a computer scientist, a sociologist and a politician. Only men. Did DKultur not find any qualified women? Or did these all decline? What was going on?

The radio station is based in Berlin, and here we have Constanze Kurz, she lives and works here, a computer scientist, author, spokesperson for the Chaos Computer Club (Europe’s largest association of hackers), she is an authorised expert for the parliament (Bundestag) and the Federal Constitutional Court, she has great knowledge on data preservation, the Federal trojan horse computer surveillance program, microchips in documents, privacy protection and social networks, she regularly writes a column for the FAZ, a national newspaper (Aus dem Maschinenraum), has published the book Die Datenfresser (The Data Snatchers) and on top of all that is very eloquent and entertaining – for these reasons I was expecting to hear her name called out as a guest for the show whenever it was a topic to do with data and internet (yes, I am a true fan). Of course she is not the only competent woman that comes to my mind without much research, there is for example also Anne Roth, a blogger and internet activist, or women from political parties and more. I suppose the situation will be similar for the other topics, there’s NOT ONLY competent men to be found. Only somehow they are what DRadio comes up with foremost.

Of course the qualfication to discuss an issue is not anything that can be measured objectively. Some of the guest on the show I found brilliant, others quite inadequate for an informative and broad discussion, and this had nothing to do with their gender. But when women are heard half as often as men in talks on some 30 topics, and these are topics relevant to our current society, on a high scientific level or simply concerning matters of every day life – then what is going on?

A short while ago I heard the very bad review of a new children’s picture book on work and professions (it may well have been on DKultur): In this book men go off to work in the office, on a building-site, on an agricultural field, in some gastronomical place and more. Women are housewives and mothers. Oh, I forgot, one did go off to work, as a kindergarden teacher.

I assume that whoever produced this book did not keep any statistics on the gender of the characters in the book. They were obviously chosen on the basis of competence for their respective jobs. Gender equality or quotas did not influence their being chosen. It is most probably a mere coincidence that a vast number of housewives are being depicted and not a single ,househusband’, and that there are no female architects, farmers or doctors in the book as well as no male kindergarden teachers. Only, this accidental selection does paint a rather outdated and conservative picture of society, doesn’t it.

Of course we not only have this book, in addition there are loads of pink toys, clothes and sweets for the girls, and toys, clothes and sweets in all other colours imaginable for the boys, which leads to a totally unneccessary division of the sexes and their possibilities and opportunites from early days on. Television programs such as sesame street (refer to my blog text from January Happy birthday Sesame Street) and others add to this.

And then there is DRadio and ARD (channel 1, public TV station) and ZDF (channel 2, public TV station). Of course not always but in a large number of programs and fictional productions a gender imbalance is the normal situation, so much so that we very often are not even aware of it any more. In Germany we have just about equal numbers of women (41,64 mio.) and men (40,21 mio.) as the figures for December 2011 show (source: Statistisches Bundesamt). But in fictional TV productions that tell stories of every day life or sometimes exceptional situations in our society, we find twice as many male over female characters, over and over again. And we have been used to this for so long that maybe we do not even notice it any more. But that is a topic for another day.

Dear people from Deutschlandradio Kultur:
Of course you are no bad radio people and you are no misogynists either.
Nonetheless what you do is somehow bad in as far as you are creating a normality that does not correspond to reality. Both men AND women have something to say on banal and important subjects, on politics and society. It is worthwhile to listen to them both. You say you do not want a quota and that you do not regard gender equality as something of importance for your program. But please do consider how outdated a situation you are creating with your guest lists is. So please: do abandon your male 66+%-quota.