Helmut Thoma: Ex-RTL boss died

RTL founder Dr. Helmut Thoma (1939-2025) is dead. This reports, among other things, on May 26, citing his family. He is said to have already been buried.

The media manager, who turned 86, died “surprisingly” of heart failure on May 22nd, it is said that it was cited from a message from the family. Thoma was “a loving father and husband, also an internationally recognized media manager, a visionary, a creator, cross -border commuter and lateral thinker”. “A person who not only made television, but who knew how to move television, to change, sometimes provoke and always provoke and always with a clear view of what the viewer really interested.”

Helmut Thoma, born in Vienna, was considered a pioneer of private television. He came from public service Radio ORF, where he was head of the legal department, and switched to Radio Luxembourg in 1973. First he was the managing director of the Luxembourg private retail group RTL in Germany, from 1982 director of the German RTL radio program and from 1984 CEO of the German RTL-Privat TV, which started on January 2.

Helmut Thoma led the broadcaster to success – many of the programs he introduced have survived to this day. Thanks to formats such as “good times, bad times”, “Tutti frutti”, “exclusive” and talk shows RTL became a fixture in the German TV landscape.

For his trashy program strategy, there was a good criticism, which he had with legendary statements such as “The bait must taste like the fish, not the angler” or “in shallow you could not react drowned”.

In 1998 Thoma handed over his post as the sole managing director to the next Austrian, Gerhard Zeiler. He then acted until 2002 as the media representative of the then Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Wolfgang Clement.