Recognizing Florida Entertainment for the achievement as 2021 draws to a close – where does one begin? Maybe because the production company was behind what was surely the most surprising and undoubtedly one of the most important television moments of the year. Whereby “Moment” is a far understatement: The #not natural documentary lasted more than seven hours in the spring, in which the complete shift of a nurse was shown in real time in order to draw attention to the nursing shortage in this country, which has not only existed since Corona.
The documentary went beyond the scope of the 15 minutes actually played in “Joko and Klaas versus ProSieben”, for which ProSieben cannot be praised enough for its flexibility, and thus reached a large audience. Almost six million people took a quick look at least once, even if considerably fewer stayed tuned in the entire time. The attribution “Wundertüte” is now claimed by some programs on German television, but none of them fit as well as the 15 minutes “Joko & Klaas Live”, in which the two often only play a supporting role. And if you look at the always very good ratings, then the audience obviously loves that everything is possible, from camera images from the stomach of Joko & Klaas to a vaccination appeal from the prospective Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
If you look back at the Florida year 2021, then right at the beginning “Who’s stealing the show?” catches the eye – and proof that you can turn the umpteenth quiz format on German television into something very special. This is not only due to the wealth of ideas when devising the various games or the curious idea of offering the moderation of the next edition as the main prize – but also the fact that everything is possible within the format. For example, a wonderful homage to television when Bastian Pastewka wins.
But Florida Entertainment is now much more than the production company behind the various ideas of Joko and Klaas, even if that is still the core of the company, which broke away from the Endemol Shine Group at the beginning of 2019 and has since been owned by Arne Kreutzfeldt and Thomas Schmitt is led. The two explained in the DWDL interview in 2019: “It would be sad if we had no further ambitions. After all, the core business with Joko and Klaas is only scalable to a limited extent.” And: “We want to transfer the Florida brand to other genres.”
In 2021 you can say: It really worked out “excellently”. Because Florida Entertainment succeeded in doing something at the German Television Awards in 2021, which is also a rarity for larger production houses: a hat trick. There were three awards in each of the three broad categories of entertainment, information and fiction. “Who’s stealing the show?” was honored as the best show, the #non-self-evident documentary as the best infotainment – and then the improv production “Für immer Sommer 90” starring Charly Hübner also won the television award for best film.
Apart from that, Florida also had a hand in one of the more refreshing programs in this federal election campaign: In the field of information, they work together with Louis Klamroth and have a stake in his production company K2H, which produced the “ProSieben Bundestagswahlshow” among other things. The fact that with “Baywatch Berlin” in cooperation with Studio Bummens one of the most successful podcasts in the country comes from Florida, should only be mentioned in passing.
In the end, it remains to be said: Arne Kreutzfeldt and Thomas Schmitt have long since made more of Florida Entertainment than just a pure Joko & Klaas butt, which manages to deliver nonsense and relevance in an equally worth seeing form like hardly any other production house. That’s why the two are among the screen heroes 2021 on behalf of the entire Florida team.
