Claus-Erich Boetzkes (born 29 March 1956) is a German journalist and television moderator.

Career

Born in

Memmingen Memmingen (; Swabian German, Swabian: ''Memmenge'') is a town in Swabia (Bavaria), Swabia, Bavaria, Germany. It is the economic, educational and administrative centre of the Danube-Iller region. To the west the town is flanked by the Iller, the ...

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

, Boetzkes studied communication science, political science, sociology and economics at the

Ludwig Maximilians University The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

. In 2007 he did his doctorate at the TU Ilmenau on the subject of ''Organisation als Nachrichtenfaktor'' (''Organization as a News Factor''). Today he is also a lecturer at this university. Due to his teaching activities and his academic achievements, he was appointed honorary professor in 2011. There he is researching, among other things, with the help of the eye tracking technique eye tracking on the retention and understanding performance of viewers of TV news. In 2019, he published a study on the effect of background images on the

Tagesschau (German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, se ...

, which sometimes distracts considerably from the content. In addition, Boetzkes teaches an English-language elective module on fake news at the Faculty of Economics and Media at the TU Ilmenau. Boetzkes completed his professional and practical training at the

Deutsche Journalistenschule The Deutsche Journalistenschule e.V. (), the German School of Journalism, is a journalism school in Germany. At the time of its establishment, it was the country's first German journalism school. Today, Deutsche Journalistenschule is considered o ...

. While still a student, he was a freelancer for the Munich

Abendzeitung The ''Abendzeitung'' ), sometimes abbreviated to ''AZ'', is a morning tabloid newspaper from Munich, Germany. A localized edition is published in Nuremberg. The paper is published six days a week; the masthead of the Saturday edition is held in l ...

. From 1980 he worked as an author and moderator for the science department of the

Bayerischer Rundfunk (; "Bavarian Broadcasting"), shortened to BR (), is a public broadcasting, public-service radio and television broadcaster, based in Munich, capital city of the Bavaria, Free State of Bavaria in Germany. BR is a member organization of the ARD (b ...

. He received the

Kurt-Magnus-Preis Kurt Magnus (March 28, 1887 – June 20, 1962) was a German lawyer and politician, best known as a pioneer in establishing radio broadcasting in Germany.

for a radio report on a kidney transplant. Later he moderated, among other things, the political talk show ''Espresso'' on

Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (; "Central German Broadcasting"), shortened to MDR (; stylized as mdr), is the public broadcaster for the federal states of Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. Established in January 1991, its headquarters are in Leipzig, wi ...

(MDR) and the '' ARD-Mittagsmagazin''. In 1983 the BR-Hörfunk hired him as an editor in the economic department. Two years later he became head of music and, in 1989, head of entertainment. Together with the pop singer

Nicole Seibert Nicole Seibert (née Hohloch; born 25 October 1964), known professionally as Nicole, is a German singer, songwriter, musician and producer. In 1982, she became the first German representative to win the Eurovision Song Contest. She has released ...

he commented on the

Eurovision Song Contest The Eurovision Song Contest (), often known simply as Eurovision, is an international Music competition, song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) among its members since 1956. Each participating broadcaster ...

in Dublin in 1988. During his tenure, there were serious upheavals in radio as private program providers came onto the market. In response, Boetzkes introduced today's standard format radio and computer-aided music selection. From 1990 to 1992 he was the sole responsible program manager at

Bayern 3 Bayern 3 is a public radio station owned and operated by Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), the public broadcaster in the German state of Bavaria. History Bayern 3 started operating on 1 April 1971 as BR’s third radio channel. It is focused on pop mu ...

, having previously been program manager for the weekend and

Thomas Gottschalk Thomas Johannes Gottschalk (born 18 May 1950 in Bamberg) is a German radio and television host and entertainer. He is best known for hosting ''Wetten, dass..?'', for many years Europe's biggest television show, which he steered to huge success i ...

program manager during the week. After switching to television, Boetzkes went to

ARD-aktuell ARD-aktuell has been the central television newsroom of the ARD (broadcaster), ARD since 1977. ARD-aktuell is a joint institution of the ARD (broadcaster), ARD. It is located at Norddeutscher Rundfunk, NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) in Hamburg ...

in Hamburg for Bayerischer Rundfunk. There he presented the newly introduced '' Nachtmagazin'' on ARD from 1995 to 1997. From 1997 to 2021, he presented the newly created moderated Tagesschau bulletin in the afternoon, since 2001 in weekly rotation with his colleague Susanne Holst until 30 December 2021. On 11 September 2001, he hosted the first Tagesschau broadcasts, including the 8 p.m. edition after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

. He also anchored another 8 p.m. edition tagesschau on 7 October 2001. He also moderated editions of the consumer program ''Ohne Gewähr'' together with Anka Zink and Philipp Sonntag. Before that, the Bayern quiz ''Bayern gewinnt'' for some time.

Personal life

Boetzkes is married for the second time and has three children. He lives in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

References

External links

Literature from and about Claus-Erich Boetzkes
in the

German National Library The German National Library (DNB; ) is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to collect, permanently archive, comprehens ...

Claus-Erich Boetzkes
on

IMDb IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...

1959 births Living people German television journalists {{Authority control