The Viennese media manager made RTL big as managing director in the 80s and 90s and thus had a lasting impact on German private television. After his departure, he was less responsive to the media group and contributed his knowledge to a number of supervisory boards. On Friday, May 3rd, Thoma will be 85 years old.
Born in Vienna in 1939, it initially didn’t look like Thoma would set up a private television station, as he dropped out of high school and worked in a dairy. But he soon changed course, studied law and received his doctorate at the age of just 23. He came into contact with the media industry through ORF. He headed the legal department of the public media company in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
From a “25-man company” to an industry giant
Thoma then moved abroad to Radio Luxembourg, where the German private television branch RTL was founded and he became its managing director in 1984. He held this position until 1998 (at times together with Erich Staake), where he built the company from a “25-man operation” into an industry giant. Under him, RTL achieved annual market shares of over 17 percent in some cases – hardly imaginable for a private broadcaster today.
“I always paid attention to the audience, and I viewed television as a service to the customer,” Thoma revealed his secret for building a successful television company in a “Horizont” interview several years ago. During his time, he made many mostly profitable decisions – always with an eye on the audience ratings – such as the launch of the German daily soap “Good Times, Bad Times” (GZSZ) and the game show “Tutti Frutti” including a lot of bare skin. The purchase of the Formula 1 broadcasting rights also fell into his era. He also introduced the advertising-relevant target group of 14 to 49 year olds in German-speaking countries.
“At least you can’t drown in the shallows”
RTL was repeatedly confronted with accusations of poor standards. Thoma, who was rarely at a loss for pithy sayings, saw it easily: “I always said: At least you can’t drown in the shallows.” In 1998 his RTL career ended involuntarily. He had to hand over the top job to another Austrian – Gerhard Zeiler. Regarding his resignation, he once told “Welt am Sonntag”: “The extent of ingratitude is simply unbelievable. There is no one in Europe who, like me, built a television station from scratch and led it to market leadership.”
Many years after his departure, he was critical of the media landscape and described private television in Germany as a “catastrophe”. Two large groups – RTL and ProSiebenSat.1 – would share the entire cake and would have no interest in making “real programming”. “The two of them would like to send the test image if they could. This increases profits, but nothing happens anymore,” said Thoma.
He described streaming providers like Netflix, which are increasingly putting classic linear television in distress, as a “phenomenon” rather than a threat to the TV industry. “Money, money and more money is being pumped into it; at some point you will see that they can’t do magic either,” he said.
“Sitting in the garden and waiting for the Grim Reaper is not an option”
After leaving RTL, Thoma worked for several years as media representative for the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. He then became self-employed and sat on numerous supervisory boards. Because: “Sitting in the garden and waiting for the Grim Reaper is not an option.” What he brought in there is still valid and works, says the media manager, who never sat in front of the television much, “because I had to watch so much in the office.”
In his free time, Thoma, who was fond of the Buddhist philosophy of life, enjoyed diving, among other things, but particularly caused a stir with a stay in Syria. Long before the turn of the millennium, he and a grave robber stole a gravestone, as he recounted many years later. “He took me to a cave tomb in the ancient desert city of Palmyra and said, ‘Now let’s crawl in there.’ I was a bit worried. It was night and there were snakes…” he told “Welt”.
Thoma has received numerous awards for his professional work – for example as Media Person of the Year in 1989, with the German Media Prize and an “International Emmy Award”. In this country he received the Golden Medal of Honor from the City of Vienna and the Great Silver Medal of Honor for services to the Republic of Austria.
