Johannes B. Kerner
Encyclopedia
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
) is a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
TV personality best known as a sportscaster
Sportscaster
In sports broadcasting, a commentator gives a running commentary of a game or event in real time, usually during a live broadcast. The comments are normally a voiceover, with the sounds of the action and spectators also heard in the background. In the case of television commentary, the commentator...
.
Kerner was raised in Hersel, Germany in a Catholic household. He attended boarding school at Aloisiuskolleg
Aloisiuskolleg
The Aloisiuskolleg is a co-educational, private and Catholic University-preparatory school in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Germany with an affiliated boarding school directed by the Jesuits. The school is named for Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. It has an excellent reputation and is considered one of the most...
in Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
and went on to study business administration in Berlin, but did not graduate.
Career
He started his career in television at Sender Freies BerlinSender Freies Berlin
Sender Freies Berlin was the ARD public radio and television service for West Berlin from 1 June 1954 until 1990 and for Berlin as a whole from German reunification until 30 April 2003...
in 1986 first as an intern, then as a reporter for local sportscasts. From 1990 to 1992 he regularly hosted "Punkt 4 Länderreport", a national afternoon newscast on ARD
ARD (broadcaster)
ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...
.
He became known to a wider audience as a host and producer for the popular soccer show 'ran – Sat.1 Bundesliga' on the private Sat.1
Sat.1
Sat.1 is a privately owned German television broadcasting station. Sat.1 was the first privately owned television broadcasting station in Germany, having started one day before RTL Television....
channel when the network acquired the broadcasting rights to the Fußball-Bundesliga
Fußball-Bundesliga
The Fußball-Bundesliga is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of Germany's football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. It is contested by 18 teams and operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the 2. Bundesliga...
, the highest national soccer league in Germany. He hosted the show from August 1992 until end of 1997 in rotation with a number of other young broadcasters who went on to become TV personalities in Germany, including Reinhold Beckmann
Reinhold Beckmann
Reinhold Beckmann is a German journalist and presenter.- Life :Afer school in Syke, Beckmann studied the German language, film and theatre in Cologne....
(who now hosts his own weekly talk show), Oliver Welke
Oliver Welke
Oliver Welke is a German television presenter, actor, comedian and television journalist.- Life :Welke studied journalism at University of Münster. In 1993 he finished his university studies. Welke works on German television. Since May 2009 Welke is part of comedy team heuteshow on German...
and Monica Lierhaus
Monica Lierhaus
Monica Christiane Lierhaus is a German sports journalist.In 1989 she passed her Abitur at the Charlotte-Paulsen-Gymnasium in Hamburg. She studied English and German literature at the University of Hamburg during which she worked as a junior in the editorial office of the magazine Sport-Bild...
. For this show he received a number of awards, including a prize as the most well-liked sportscaster in 1996 and 1997 by the German sports magazine Sport Bild
Sport Bild
Sport Bild is a German sports weekly published every Wednesday. According to its publisher it is Europe's biggest sports magazine with a circulation of almost half million copies....
.
In 1996 Johannes B. Kerner started his first daily afternoon talkshow on Sat 1 simply called Kerner.
In 1997 he switched to a public television channel again, this time to ZDF
ZDF
Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
(as an independent freelancer) where he was a host for the popular weekly sports review das aktuelle sportstudio (until 2006) and a number of soccer games played by the German national team. He served as main host for all games broadcasted by ZDF during the FIFA World Cup
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...
2006 in Germany in front of a large live audience in Berlin, for which he receive a Deutscher Fernsehpreis award (comparable to an Emmy). In addition to this, he was master of ceremonies
Master of Ceremonies
A Master of Ceremonies , or compere, is the host of a staged event or similar performance.An MC usually presents performers, speaks to the audience, and generally keeps the event moving....
for several special show programs on ZDF such as yearly reviews of the people and stories making news in the past twelve months around Christmas.
In 2009 Johannes B. Kerner switched back to Sat.1 for a TV show simply called "kerner", as a magazine now.
Johannes B. Kerner Show
His eponymous talk show went on air every Thursday night on ZDF at around 11 pm since January 1998. Due to its success it was expanded to four times per week from Tuesday to Friday in January 2002. The show features mostly German celebrities and TV personalities, as well as regular people with interesting stories. Unlike other typical late night shows, Johannes B. Kerner does not open with Kerner holding any stand-up monologue and only has him sitting at a desk and talking with a number of guests seated next to him (usually 3 to 5). Also there is no regular live band in the studio.Since January 21, 2005 his Friday evening session has been transformed into a cooking show called Kochen bei Kerner (Cooking with Kerner). Normally the show features five chefs who each explain and prepare a course for an elaborate meal live and within one hour. After each cook has finished his or her dish Kerner and the others are tasting and informally judging it, before some people in the audience also receive a sample of it. The show regularly features some of the most famous chefs from German-speaking countries such as Johann Lafer
Johann Lafer
Johann Lafer is an Austrian chef living in Germany.Johann Lafer became well-known through his televised cooking show and his numerous cookbooks...
, Alfons Schubeck, Tim Mälzer, Sarah Wiener, Ralf Zacherl and Horst Lichter, as well as occasionally some chefs like Jamie Oliver
Jamie Oliver
James "Jamie" Trevor Oliver, MBE , sometimes known as The Naked Chef, is an English chef, restaurateur and media personality, known for his food-focused television shows, cookbooks and more recently his campaign against the use of processed foods in national schools...
.
Private life and trivia
Kerner is married to Britta BeckerBritta Becker
Britta Becker is a former German field hockey midfield player.Becker made her debut in the German women's field hockey team in 1991 and was the youngest in the Olympic squad in 1992. She was part of the 1995 winning team in the European Cup and the bronze medal winning team in the 1998 World Cup...
, a former field hockey
Field hockey
Field Hockey, or Hockey, is a team sport in which a team of players attempts to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking a ball into an opposing team's goal using sticks...
World Cup and Olympic medalist for Germany. They have four children (Emily, Nik, Polly, Jilly) and currently reside in Hamburg, where his talk show is produced.