These days, all events in Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) are associated with the ongoing crisis. According to a company spokeswoman, however, this personel does not belong in this context: “Verena Keysers is giving up management of rbbKultur at her own request at the end of the year.
She made this decision at the beginning of June and also informed the management. This step is not related to the current events in rbb.” The personal details became known on Wednesday on the station’s intranet. And it is surprising why this decision, which has been fixed since the beginning of June, is only being communicated now. But on the radio The clocks in Berlin-Brandenburg are running backwards.
Verena Keysers has been the head of the cultural program since 2016 and, according to the broadcaster, has helped build the multimedia brand rbbKultur, reformed the program in times of austerity measures and pushed ahead with the digitization of cultural offerings.
Under the direction of Verena Keysers, the culture radio of the public broadcaster has skinned several times, at the latest with the reform in autumn 2021, the goal set out in the press release was set in motion:
The rbbKultur team “is developing the new, classically influenced music profile with clearly audible extensions, is working on innovative program offerings and an overall more modern and transparent overall impression of the cultural program”.
This was a constant challenge for the (mostly) conservative audience, and the music profile in particular was simply an impertinence for the hardcore classical purists. Keysers never tired of emphasizing that the name of the wave is not RBB Klassik, but RBB Kultur, a feuilleton that wants to include and develop more subject areas in the spectrum of art and culture than just riding the classic feuilleton route with classical music accompaniment.
Verena Keysers had new target groups in mind, always a difficult undertaking in the structurally conservative sector.
Now she stops. The company spokeswoman could not say who will take over what is coming. But rbbKultur undauntedly sends a good sign in these RBB days of confusion and confusion.
