Gerhard Zeiler, born in 1955 in Vienna (Austria), joined RTL Group in November 1998 when he was appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of RTL Television in Cologne. In this capacity, Zeiler was responsible for the German RTL family of channels (RTL Television, Vox, RTL II, Super RTL, N-TV). In March 2003 Gerhard Zeiler was additionally appointed CEO of RTL Group. He handed over the management of RTL Television to AnkeSchäferkordt in September 2005 to fully concentrate on RTL Group’s international entertainment network.
In his function as CEO of RTL Group, Gerhard Zeiler is a member of the Supervisory Boards of Groupe M6 in France and RTL Television in Germany, and a member and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Alpha Media Group in Greece. He has been a member of the Bertelsmann
AG Executive Board since October 2005.
Gerhard Zeiler began his career as a freelance journalist and then became press spokesman for the Austrian Minister for Education and the Arts, Dr Fred Sinowatz, whom he eventually followed to the Federal Chancellor Office in 1983. Later he continued working in
the same capacity for Federal Chancellor Dr Franz Vranitzky. In 1986 he became Secretary-General of the Austrian public broadcaster ORF in Vienna. After a two-year period as CEO of Tele 5 and a further two-year period as CEO of RTL II, he was elected Chief Executive
Officer of ORF in 1994 and stayed in this position until November 1998.