Portrait: Bettina Böttinger

maxime68's picture

By maxime68 on Saturday, July 4, 2009 - 15:30

“Have you seen B.trifft?” a question my father asked me years ago. Mind you, I had him repeat that question several times, until he finally explained that this was a talk show hosted by Bettina Böttinger. I had no idea who she was, but have followed her career and her shows ever since.

b
(photo WDR)

Bettina Böttinger is one of the faces of the regional, public TV channel “WDR” (Westdeutscher Rundfunk), thanks to satellite TV also available via Astra (19.2). Böttinger, born on July 4th 1956, is a German talk show host, producer of her own and several other popular shows. She joined WDR in 1985, where she could be seen in various news programs.

She had planned to become an editor chief when one day fate – in a positive way – happened upon her. One colleague left and the station’s director asked her to take over a talk show. Her first own talk show was called “B.trifft” (B.meets) which is pronounced “betrifft” and then translates into “it concerns”. Her invitees knew they weren’t the only guests, but weren’t told who the others were beforehand.

She left WDR as an employee and founded her own production company encanto TV. This company not only produces her own talk shows but some very popular docu soaps where animals and their handlers are the stars.

b
(photo WDR)

(1 vote)
Cath's picture
B trifft...
Submitted by Cath on July 5, 2009 - 17:54.

thanks for the portrait, Maxime - I kind of lost track of her after "B trifft" (had an ex who watched it religiously and ultimately I got drawn into it, as well) - it's nice to know she's still up and running (even though running less extremely these days) after she had to put up with a lot of thankless media coverage after being outed.

Hm, I think I'll try WDR on my next Friday night home!

 

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maxime68's picture
böttinger
Submitted by maxime68 on July 6, 2009 - 06:16.

i don't watch it religiously ;) and I even forget most Fridays that it's on, I watch it on Sunday mornings The outing happened before internet-times, I was often out of the country and didn't get much of the coverage. I read some mentions about it while preparing this article and am surprised that many still think she can't take a joke. Times have changed and it's easy for some people to comment on something that has happened more than 10 years ago, when they were probably still wearing diapers ;) She's even more successful than before and her show is most enjoyable, sometimes more, sometimes less - depends on how the guests interact.

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