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“Only the first step”Last week, RTL Group and John de Mol agreed on an asset deal in the Netherlands. Fons van Westerloo, Chief Executive Officer of RTL Nederland, gives Backstage his view on thedeal and its consequences.Sardinia - 04.07.2007

The Dutch Newspaper "De Telegraaf" thinksthat the deal between RTL Group, RTLNederland and Talpa is "one of the most nota-ble deals in television history". Is the deal real-ly that big?It's definitely not the biggest thing in TV history -that was probably something like the switch fromblack-and-white to color TV. But it is a big deal inthe Netherlands, especially because John de Molis involved. He is an excellent entrepreneur, a bil-lionaire, a force in the Dutch market. We areproud that a man of his stature is joining ourranks as an important shareholder.

What is the rational for this deal?A radio station with the target group and thereach of Radio 538 perfectly fits in with the exis-ting activities of RTL Nederland. Second, the dealwill help to secure and strengthen the position ofthe RTL family of TV channels in the Dutchaudience and advertising market. The number ofbig channels that will sustain is not unlimited.

What will be the role of Radio 538?Radio 538 is the market leader. It is veryprofitable while delivering very nice quali-ty programmes. That's quite something.They are also doing extremely well interms of events, marketing and billboar-ding. There are so many possibilities todo things together, both with RTL 4, butespecially with RTL 5, given the youngtarget audience.

Your strong TV market position is nowsecured?Together with all the people in Luxem-

bourg, we managed to close the deal. But we stillhave to make it a success. So far, we only madethe first step, the next step is even bigger. Wehave to outsmart the competition again.

What is the impact for the employees?For the RTL employees, there won't be a newsituation at all. If good people from John de Mol’schannel Tien become available, they of coursecan apply for jobs at RTL Nederland on ourterms. See: If you start a channel, you have topay more than the standard salary, so they earna lot at Tien. But if we hire people from Tien, therewill be no difference in salary for people whostayed loyal to us two years ago and those whotook the adventure.

Why did Tien not turn out to be a success?There are many reasons. Clearly, just money isnot enough. It's also about the balance of costsand profits and about the profile of a channel. It'sa different thing to be a producer than a TVbroadcaster, and the economics of TV and radioare quite different as well.

Fons van Westerloo

Fons van Westerloo among other winners of the “Bertelsmann Award for Outstanding Achievements”

at the Management Meeting 2007

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What about your possible new channel?We plan to launch a fourth Free-TV channelunder Luxembourgish broadcasting license, cal-led RTL 8.

Can you already say something about the pro-file of RTL 8?The profile should be slightly female and weexpect a market share of roughly three per centas we do not want to cannibalise our other chan-nels. In terms of programming, there will be a lotof second chance viewing opportunities.I hope we will develop it into a channelwith a few interactive possibilities. Theaverage TV viewer is still a lazy animalwho wants to sit on the couch and enjoywatching his favorite programmes. Butclearly, they also use more and more theinternet, searching, creating and distri-buting their own story. That also couldhappen on a small TV channel like RTL 8.

Can you give some examples of theTV assets which will be acquired byRTL Nederland?First of all, we talk about football: For oneyear at least, we will have the DutchPremiere League. For four years, wehave secured the Dutch cup and theDutch national team whenever they playin foreign countries. In addition, we willbroadcast summaries of almost allforeign football, Spanish, German,English, Italian and French football,almost everything. The Premiere Leagueand the national team will be broadcaston RTL 4, the rest goes to RTL 7.

Also, we gained the biggest lottery, thepostcode lottery. We have now Deal orno deal and One against 100 with Lindade Mol. All these programmes move toRTL, financed by the Lottery.

John de Mol developed the drama,Gooische Vrouwen, a quite good andsuccessful series about four women andtheir friendship with Linda de Mol. Thiswill be coming to us. They also develo-

ped a lot of drama series which were not so suc-cessful on Tien. We have access and will seewhether these programmes might have moresuccess on one of our channels.

What will the future cooperation with John deMol look like?I think it will be pretty simple: First, he has theright to take one seat in the supervisory board ofRTL Nederland. This means that he has no say inthe day to day operations of our company. Notthat I am afraid, but it is a legal fact that his role

will be in the supervi-sory body of themanagement.

Further, our pro-gramme directorswill have regularmeetings with himbased on the contentagreement. We willobtain a first look inthe Netherlands of allformats developedby his Creative Unit,we even contributeto the creative pro-cess. Also, we couldreceive a share in thepotential worldwideprofits such formatsmight generate.

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“Only the first step” - continued

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RTL Aktuell attracts moreviewers than public news-cast “heute”With average weekday viewing figures of 3.66 mil-lion in June, RTL Aktuell came in ahead of ZDF'smain news bulletin (3.65 million viewers).Germany - 04.07.2007

For the first time, therefore, RTL Aktuell also stro-de ahead of one of the main two public servicecompetitors for total audience share over the ageof three. The show, anchored by Peter Kloeppel,has already been the most popular informationsource by far among younger viewers for manyyears.

In terms of market share, RTL Aktuell is a clearleader of the main news bulletins in German tele-vision. The half-yearly average (January to June)for RTL Aktuell was 19 per cent, clearly head ofHeute (18 per cent), Tagesschau (17.5 per cent)and Sat 1 News (11.5 per cent). Since main newsbulletins are aired at different times, the overview

is particularly meaningful when ratings are com-pared.

RTL editor-in-chief Peter Kloeppel said: "We areclearly able to attract an ever growing number ofviewers of all ages with our news programme.We aim to not only highlight urgent problems butgo one step further and also present solutions forthose who are affected and help keep up theirspirits. Our successful Hartz IV project duringJune has encouraged us to continue thisapproach. We are therefore currently starting anRTL training offensive, due to run for severalweeks, where we will help young people find atraining placement."

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Peter Kloeppel, RTL Aktuell

Atomic Wedgie nowavailable on Helio FremantleMedia and mobile entertainment deve-loper Mobliss have announced that their comedychannel, Atomic Wedgie, will now launch on themobile operator Helio.United States of America - 04.07.2007

Atomic Wedgie offers hours of original andrepurposed short-form comedy programming,with a menu of 12 different programs to choo-se from, including more than 150 mobile shorts.

“This is a pivotal moment for Atomic Wedgie.Helio brings the channel to a targeted group ofearly adopters who we feel will embrace its

innovative content and enjoy the humor thatour channel provides,” said Keith HindleExecutive Vice President for FremantleMedia’sNorth American licensing team. “The launch isalso perfectly timed to the premiere of somenew hilarious programming and an intensivemarketing campaign that will kick off thismonth.”

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RTLnow.de focuses on free Video on Demand More than half of all formats are now available free of charge from www.RTLnow.de.More RTL programmes available for free from RTLnow.de during summer 2007Germany - 03.07.2007

RTLnow.de, RTL's video on demand service,will add at least five more TV formats to its freedownload service over the next few weeks.

The digital programme library only recentlyexpanded to include Oliver Geissen,Staatsanwalt Posch and Mein Baby and thenew RTL Entern oder Kentern (Board orCapsize) show. In recent weeks, it has alsobeen possible to download Exclusiv - Das Star-Magazin and RTL aktuell from www.RTLnow.deminutes after they have been aired on televi-sion. From 16 July, the new Surprise show withOliver Geißen will also be available and thecourt shows Strafgericht and Familiengerichtwill also be available from the end of July. VoDversions of Mein Garten and Unsere erstegemeinsame Wohnung will also be available byAugust at the latest.

"We want to make video on demand popular inGermany and offer a real service. Our guidingprinciple is that RTL viewers will not miss any-thing ever again because they can downloadtheir favourite programmes free of charge fromRTLnow.de and catch up whenever they want,"explains Beatrice Züll who is in charge of theonline service provided by RTLnow.de at RTLInteractive. "Our objective is to offer as manyRTL programmes as possible free of charge viaonline streaming."

More than half of the RTL programmes availa-ble at www.RTLnow.de 24-hours a day can bedownloaded by users free of charge. This is astrategy that works - the RTL daily soap Alleswas zählt (AWZ) was downloaded more thanone million times alone in May. AWZ downloadfigures for June rose to 1.25 million.

“Entern oder Kentern”off to a successful startRTL's new summer show Entern oder Kentern(Board or Capsize) has got off to a successfulstart. The first episode attracted an average of3.34 million viewers over the age of 3 and 21.6per cent in the target group.Germany - 03.07.2007

In the show hosted by Sonja Zietlow, threeteams have to make their way through an obs-tacle course in order to board the pirate ship

containing the treasure guarded by CaptainRaff (Götz Otto).

Miriam Pielhau and her team, the Bush-Food Griller

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First half 2007: Record figures for Super RTL's online servicesWith almost five million hits per month, Super RTL's websites for children and youngpeople remained, without a doubt, the top websites during the first half of 2007.Germany - 04.07.2007

First half 2007: RTL is number one with young viewers,Vox ahead of ARDRTL Television was once again number one with young viewers during the first half ofthe year. With a market share of 16.2 per cent for 14-49 year olds, RTL came inahead of ProSieben (11.9%), Sat.1 (10.5%), Vox (7.7%), ARD (7.6%) und ZDF (6.6%).Vox, which gained 0.9 percentage points and surpassed ARD, is now one of the majorplayers in Germany. Germany - 03.07.2007

M6 Scouts Tomorrow’s ChansonniersThe homeland of chansons is looking for a worthy successor to the likes of CharlesAznavour and Gilbert Bécaut, Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel – and M6 is assis-ting in the process. The French RTL Group channel is ringing out its Talent Tout Neufcontest this summer, for the third consecutive year.France - 03.07.2007

First half 2007: M6 attracts 100,000 additional viewersIn the first semester of 2007, M6 is very proud of having reached two of its ambitiousgoals. First, M6 was the only national channel in France to increase its overall num-ber of viewers and second, the channel clearly improved its performance in the hou-seholds equipped with digital terrestrial television (DTT), reaching an average audience share of 10.8 per cent.France - 04.07.2007

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RTL’s Hartz-IV project draws positive conclusionContributing to RTL’s Hartz-IV project, reporter Torsten Misler lived for one month alife with limitations as an unemployment benefit recipient. At the end of the month,he had from a total of EUR 345 exactly 4 Cent left.Germany - 02.07.2007

FremantleMedia and Namco Bandai Networks to bring outIdols on mobileFremantleMedia Enterprises and Namco Bandai Networks will work on a joint projectto develop, publish and distribute mobile games based on the Idols format.United Kingdom - 28.06.2007

Antena 3 opens summer programmingAntena 3 has practically finished the 2006-2007 season. Now it implements its sum-mer programming, which will mainly affect the morning and afternoon slots, with thedebut of a game show called El destape and the soap opera Amores de mercado.Spain - 28.06.2007

Five commissions the new crime series Street Crime LiveFive has commissioned North One Television to produce Street Crime Live, a crime-fighting series presented by Donal MacIntyre.United Kingdom - 29.06.2007

Nouvelle Star – a success on M6s websiteAn average of 4.5 million viewers followed the last episode of this season’s NouvelleStar on 13 June. In addition to that count the big fan community of the show in theInternet: this year 36.5 million videos have been retrieved from the websites nouvellestar.fr, wideo.fr and m6musicbrigade.com.France - 02.07.2007

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Antonia Rados ReceivesRobert GeisendörferAwardGermany – 29.06.2007

Antonia Rados

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The RTL Television reportage entitled Feuertod(Death by Fire) by Antonia Rados has receivedthis year’s Robert Geisendörfer Award in thecategory “television.”

This represents yet another important acknow-ledgment of the poignant reportage, which wasaired on RTL Television on November 12, 2006;Feuertod also received the German CameraAward and was nominated for the 2007Grimme Award.

When author and chief correspondent AntonioRados drove to the Afghan city of Herat with acamera team for her project Feuertod, shewanted to document the devastating condi-tions in the burn unit at the local hospital andthe fate of women who burn themselves out ofdesperation. However, what the team experien-ced went far beyond anything they could everhave imagined.

The television film tells the story of a 20 year-old woman who, after being forced into marria-ge and suffering horrible abused at the handsof her husband, poured gasoline on herbody and lit herself on fire. She wasrushed to hospital with severe burnsand died there five days later.

"With a single case study AntoniaRados manages to reveal the entireextent of a terrible human tragedy: withdiscretion and a lot of compassion, thedocumentary tells about the fatal self-

immolation of a young Afghan woman," the juryexplained.

"I also accept the award on behalf of all thepeople who worked with me on this emotional-ly difficult reportage," said Antonia Rados. "Theaward should not only remind us of the youngwoman, whose suffering we accompanied inour film, but also raise awareness of the factthat she represents the many women inAfghanistan who have suffered such a grueso-me death out of shear desperation."

"We are very pleased that Antonia Rados hasreceived the Robert Geisendörfer Award for hertruly gripping reportage," commented RTLTelevision Editor-in-Chief Peter Kloeppel. "Shehas managed to produce an outstanding pieceof journalism under very difficult conditions."

The Robert Geisendörfer Award is presented inmemory of the Christian publisher RobertGeisendörfer (1910-1976). The 24th RobertGeisendörfer Award will be presented on July 2in Cologne.

Robert Geisendörfer Award

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