Rocket Beans TV, short RBTV, is a German video live streaming channel of the TV- and media production company Rocket Beans Entertainment GmbH based in Hamburg. Rocket Beans TV started as a YouTube channel parallel to the broadcast of the video game show Game One on the channel MTV. After the end of Game One the project became the official broadcaster of the company and started to broadcast on YouTube.
History
editThe founders of the channel include Daniel Budiman, Nils Bomhoff, Etienne Gardé and Simon Krätschmer who have all previously worked together on other video game centered shows. (ex. Giga Games). On June 14th 2012, together with CEO Arno Heinisch, they founded Rocket Beans Entertainment, a media production company, as well as their YouTube channel Rocket Beans TV. The name Beans is an acronym of the founding member's first- and nicknames. The main project of the company was the video game show Game One while Rocket Beans TV was treated as a side project. Other than Game One, which focused solely on video games, Rocket Beans TV showed a variety of topics all from different media outlets such as film and TV.
The pilot for the show Quelle: Intenet (eng. Source: Internet) was won a “German Web-Video” award in the category “FYI” in 2014. The show ended up being cancelled before it's initial run however and only the pilot episode was published on their YouTube channel.
At the end of 2014 the end of Game One was announced. The last episode aired on December 24th 2014. In an announcement video, the members of Rocket Beans TV shared their plans of turning their YouTube channel into a 24-hour streaming channel. The pilot of one of their first shows, Bohn Jour, ran on December 19th 2014 in which the details and future plans for the channel were announced. The plan was to create an around the clock channel with recorded sections, as well as regular live streams. Rocket Beans TV went live for the first time on January 15th 2015. Since then, the initial group of the five founders has grown into a team of 30 people. The channel's streams were hosted on the streaming platform Twitch.
The channel initially gathered interest for being one of the first to use crowd funding as a way to get started with the project “Support Rocket Beans” in October 2014. The reason for the crowd funding was that although the company had a networking system already set up, they did not have the financial means to continue production and would have had to disband the company without the help from fans.
In June 2015 the company once again received a “German Web-Video” award in the category “Person of the Year – Male” for their work in the previous year. Currently, Rocket Beans TV is widely popular on Twitch with an audience of an average 50 000 viewers at one time. Per day, the channel gets around 200 000 viewers.
Since August 6, 2015 Rocket Beans TV airs some of its segments on regional TV stations in Germany, in cooperation with Freaks 4 U Gaming and the Giga Games founder Helmut Keiser. Under the name GamesNight.tv they and Freaks 4 Gaming show content independently of each other about games. On Sptember 8 it was announced that the station was to receive an official broadcasting permit. Related to permit was the R18 rating of the channel, otherwise the channel would not have been allowed to show content of video games rated USK18 before 10 pm in accordance with the German Children and Young Persons Protection Act. The 6. Web Video Award on June , 2016 was hosted by Rocket Beans TV, after Christian Ulmen fell ill. On August 9, 2016 it was announced that all broadcasts were to be shifted from Twitch to Youtube, as of September 1, 2016.
Concept
editRocket Beans TV broadcasts 24 hours a day, as well live segments as pre-produced content on Youtube. The segments can also be watched on demand on Youtube, in addition to the livestream. The schedule consists of mainly of gameshows, in which video games are played or news of the gaming industry are discussed. In addition to the game shows, there are talk shows such as Bohn Jour or #MoinMoin. Content of other prducers is also aired. The channel is funded through cooperations with other companies as well as donations from its viewers. Another characteristic of the channel is the transparent dealing with internal affairs. Furthermore, the viewers are interacting with the hosts during the live shows, mainly through social media.
Hosts
editThe hosts of the program are Simon Krätschmer, Daniel Budiman, Etienne Gardé and Nils Bomhoff, who once hosted the shows GIGA and Game One, a German TV show about videogames. Since the May 6th 2015, the former host of GIGA and his YouTube channel "Vorzocker" called Colin Gäbel joined the team. More set shows in the program are hosted by Dennis Richtarski, Gregor Kartsios, Sofia Kats, Daniel Schröckert, Michael Reinke and Gunnar Krupp. Popular guest hosts include Dennis Heinrichs, Annabell Klindzan, Hannes Kersting, Benjamin Koch and Michael Krogmann. As of April 2015, Ingo Meß (former voice-over artist of Game One) narrates single shows such as GAME Plus, Royal Beef or Game Two. At the end of 2015, the former Soccer Star Ralph Gunesch joined the team and is regularly seen in shows like Bohndesliga. Due to a collaboration with the eSports-Academy Bonjwa, the former professional gamer and founder of Bonjwa Niklas “Honor” Behrens and his co-partner and professional gamer Matteo “Mental Mimicry” Ricciardi functioned as guest hosts for shows with themes like StarCraft (f.ex. Straight to Gold, Call of Bundi and StarCraft Academy). Further guest hosts are the fitness coach Gino Dingh, the psychologist Michael Thiel and the presenters Lars Eric Paulsen and Florentin Will. Later, Julia Krüger and Laura Trautmann also joined the team as guest hosts.
Shows
editSeveral entertainment shows are spread across one transmission date. Some of these have already been published on their own Youtube channel before the start of the program. The program mostly consists of shows, Let's Plays or non-electronic games. Examples for shows with a set slot are Bohn Jour, #MoinMoin, RBNews, Kino+ and GAME+ Daily. Third-party productions are regularly shown in the livestream and normally also posted on Youtube by the respective owners. The more special shows include Pen&Paper or Nerd Quiz, which have an irregular schedule. While Pen&Paper includes a collaborative round with the main hosts, Nerd Quiz, Royal Beef or Call of Budi are competitions with the audience or in-between the team. Most shows of the broadcaster are self-produced or co-produced. Especially in the beginning, Rocket Beans TV cooperated regularly with the e-Sports Academy Bonjwa (f.ex. in Straight II Gold or Call of Budi). Another co-production called Gadget Inspectors was developed in cooperation with Vodafone. One can watch Gadget Inspectors on the channels of Rocket Beans TV or on a blog by Vodafone. The show won the Content Marketing Prize in 2015 due to their many views (up to 50,000 per video). Additionally, there are projects like the Social Viewing Night, which is a show in cooperation with Amazon where the hosts watched the first episode of Wayward Pines together with their audience for the first time on November 5th 2015.