TV total
 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (March 2010) |
| TV total | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Talk show Variety show |
| Created by | Stefan Raab |
| Presented by | Stefan Raab |
| Country of origin |  Germany |
| Original language | German |
| Production | |
| Producer | Stefan Raab |
| Running time | approx. 45 min. |
| Original release | |
| Network | ProSieben |
| Release | March 8, 1999 – present |
| Related | |
| Wok racing Bundesvision Song Contest Schlag den Raab | |
TV total is a German late-night television comedy talk show that has run since March 8, 1999 on ProSieben, and is currently aired at around 23:15 from Monday to Thursday.
Created, produced, and hosted by Stefan Raab, TV total focusses in particular on mocking the funniest moments from other shows on German television; it also features Raab in his outside reports, and interviewing national and international celebrity guests. As is common with German talk show hosts, Raab is bilingual. His shows are chiefly in German but he also speaks somewhat fluent English when interviewing his English-speaking guests, who have included the bands Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Coldplay, Metallica, and Manowar, martial-arts star Jackie Chan, rappers 50 Cent, Eminem, D12, Mark Wahlberg, Rihanna, Jay-Z, Paris Hilton, and Kylie Minogue. The show has its own band, the Heavytones, and most of the guest musicians and comedians regularly perform live on stage.
Since February 2001, the show has also featured Elton as Raab's intern and sidekick.
The set of TV total includes a floating interview stage that can be moved from one studio corner to the other.[citation needed] The show featured buttons with sounds and clips before Craig Ferguson's The Late Late Show (CBS TV series).[citation needed]
In 2006 Stefan Raab managed to start a new talent contest that was showed as a bonus within his TV total show. This was named "SSDSGPS" (acronym for: Stefan sucht den Super-grand-Prix-Star, meaning Stefan searches the Super-Grand-Prix-Star) and only had a total of four attendees, this was a mock on the acronym DSDS for , the German version of Pop Idol running on RTL). The winner of the show, a german singer named Max Mutzke, then performed at the Eurovision Song Contest for Germany. Though he only made it to the eight position, he later became a quite successful singer and artist in Germany and Austria. The show later had another singing competition that finally carried it to extremes – Raab's talent contest SSDSDSSWEMUGABRTLAD (acronym for: Stefan sucht den Superstar, der singen soll, was er möchte, und gerne auch bei RTL auftreten darf, meaning: “Stefan seeks the Superstar who shall sing what he wants and may also gladly perform on RTL”, this was meant as a mock on RTL Television. He created it when Deutschland sucht den Superstar candidate Max Buskohl accepted an invitation to appear in TV total after he left the show in April 2007 but was denied this performance by RTL who cited their existing contract. Raab then started a campaign called Freiheit für Max Buskohl (Freedom for Max Buskohl) that got attention for using an edited RAF kidnapping photo. After this campaign failed he started his new casting show. The winner was Stefanie Heinzmann. RTL is often mocked by Stefan Raab within his show to be a terrible and awful television transmitter.