Marcel Winatschek

Shot Before It Could Walk

Lotta in Love had been on ProSieben for exactly two days—a glossy German telenovela, the channel’s answer to the runaway success of Verliebt in Berlin—when thousands of viewers organized to demand it be canceled. The show had replaced a The Simpsons slot, which is the kind of original sin that the internet in 2006 was already perfectly equipped to punish.

ProSieben’s own forum for the show became the execution chamber. Any fan who might have defended it couldn’t get a word in—the haters had colonized every thread so completely that eventually no one could post anything coherent at all. The channel had presumably imagined something different when they rolled out that launch campaign.

I feel bad for Janine Reinhardt, who starred in the thing and had nothing to do with scheduling decisions. That’s television democracy for you: completely indifferent to whoever happens to be on screen.