RTL II

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RTL II

Type	Broadcast television network
Country	Germany
Availability	National; also distributed in Austria and Switzerland
Owner	RTL Group, Tele München Gruppe
Key people	Jochen Starke, CEO; Axel Kühn, senior vice president, programming
Launch date	March 6, 1993
Past names	RTL2
Website	www.rtl2.de

A montage of some of the "Real Surreality" Break bumpers from 2004

RTL II is a privately owned, commercial, general-interest German television channel.

It was founded as a second-generation commercial broadcaster in 1993. It quickly became infamous for its perceived "trash programming", comprising lots of soft porn as well as shows such as Peep and many pseudo-documentaries being mainly vehicles for nudity. Despite dropping all erotic programming in late 2001, its bad reputation follows RTL II to this day. Today, programming pillars are daily episodes of the local Big Brother in access primetime, and a primetime lineup consisting mostly of docu-soaps, movies and licensed series such as 24 and Stargate SG-1. Recent efforts to move further towards quality programming with science magazines and documentaries have met with an indifferent audience response.

The channel's prime-time newscast RTL II News is frequently criticized for its selection of news stories: Catering to a young audience, it has been known to put a CD release or the launch of a new gaming console in the second headline slot directly after the day's top event. This unconventional approach has supposedly brought RTL II's broadcasting licence into jeopardy at least once, as a German commercial broadcaster has to feature minimum amounts of serious informational and cultural programming to be allowed a full channel licence. Though widely criticized, the newscast is well-produced and quite popular with its target audience.

On weekdays, RTL II also airs an anime afternoon under their kids/youth banner "Pokito". Following tensions with media authorities, RTL II's Standards and Practices department is believed to be especially sensitive about children's programming. As a consequence, many anime fans criticize the channel for cutting scenes in anime series like Detective Conan ^[1] , InuYasha ^[2], One Piece ^[3] and Naruto ^[4] ^[5]. Sometimes an episode is even edited down if its original version had previously been given a FSK 6 rating, meaning that it is suitable for children ages 6 up and may legally be aired at all hours of the day.

RTL II's corporate identity used to change more often and more drastically than that of any other competing channel in the same time, sporting three totally different logos and at least four on-air design strategies in less than ten years. This is believed by some to reflect the difficulties to establish the channel as dynamic and provoking yet not as the "trash" that defined its early years. The pace of design change has slowed in recent years, with the Roman-numeral rendition of the channel's name (the "pause button") being in use since 1999.

RTL II is partly owned by RTL Group, but also by publishers Heinrich Bauer Verlag, Burda, and, jointly, by Disney/ABC and Tele München.