Heute Journal

Heute Journal is a television news magazine of ZDF, a national German television network. The name means roughly Today's Journal.

The Journal first aired 2 January 1978 as a late weekday evening 20 minute program at one time Monday through Thursday and another on Friday. The broadcast time became consistent on 1 January 1984 at 21:45. The program was extended to 30 minutes in 1991 and since 1992, a 15 minute edition on Saturdays and Sundays. The program may be extended for up to an hour for crisis coverage.

In contrast to the evening news, the Heute Journal provides in-depth coverage of daily topics, usually with detailed background material and interviews of politicians, business leaders, experts, and other key people of the day. There is also a daily report from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and weather coverage. The former moderator and managing editor, Wolf von Lojewski, says the show's model is "The 19:00 heute [evening news] tells you: Politician XY throws in the towel, we tell whereto" The Heute Journal does not claim to be complete: not all daily topics have a video clip.

The show is comparable to the daily themes of ARD. The journal has good viewership which exceeds the daily news programs and sometimes even higher than the evening news.

Theme

Initially, the program had a camera in the studio showing the anchors immediately before the start of the program with a clock overlay and a ticker with headlines of the day. The ticker sound effect was Morse Code for "heute" [today].

With the new studio in 2009, a camera moves slowly to the anchors, while in the background the issues are slowly revealed.

Since 19 February 2011, the program uses a darker background than the rest of the studio today shows. Instead of the 2D world map in the background, five globes are shown. Initially, the headlines appear in the foreground, followed by an introduction, and finally zoom to the moderators or sometimes directly to news footage.

Since 25 June 2007, the program is broadcast in 16:9, like other daily shows. It is available as video or audio podcasts.

External links

• Official website (in German)