Rudi Cerne: “File number” moderator no true crime fan

The journalist and moderator Rudi Cerne (66) can now confidently be referred to as a true crime veteran. With the German television classic “File number XY … unresolved”, he has been trying to help with the spectators to solve unexplained crimes for more than 20 years in cooperation with the spectators. While the genre True Crime, which deals with true crimes, has continued to become popular in recent years, Cerne is less concerned with it privately.

“I want to avoid an overkill in the truest sense of the word,” he replies when asked whether he himself is a true crime fan. However, “file number XY” is not his only contact point with the crime, because the moderator likes to read crime novels, as he further tells. His favorite author is the US writer Robin Cook.

“File number XY … unresolved” is hard to imagine German -speaking television. The shipment has been running on ZDF since 1967. The thought behind the format is to draw attention to viewers to previously unsolved crimes so that they may be able to provide relevant evidence of perpetrators that have not yet been identified. The editorial team works with the law enforcement authorities. Eduard Zimmermanns (1929-2009) Format has been moderated by Cerne since the beginning of 2002.

“The file number was the original,” says Cerne in the interview. “And many are now trying to do it.” However, he obviously doesn’t care about other True crime formats, even if these “in principle also advertising for ‘file number XY'” are: “I look at our show, not left and not to the right and do not let myself be distracted.”