RTL sends their new acquisition Jordi Huirne directly to the speech therapist as soon as his employment with competitor Talpa is over. Why? They think the weatherman still has too much an accent …
A small TV transfer: this week it was announced that Weerman Jordi Huirne is making his switch from Talpa to RTL. Why? John de Mol’s media company relegated him to the morning and he was a bit fed up with the early rise. “I saw the vacancy pass by and I thought: I have nothing to lose,” he says Omroep Gelderland.
Away at 6
It is a good moment, according to Jordi. “I have been working as a weatherman for Talpa for Talpa, so for Sky Radio and SBS 6, and I thought: this is perhaps a very good time to seize that opportunity. I was invited for a conversation, a screen test and then I finally got the job.”
That early getting up is starting to disappoint him. “Now I get up very early all the time. I start at SBS 6 at six o’clock in the morning, then I will work in, then I will look for weather photos and change clothes, and then I will tell the weather forecast for Hart van Nederland and Sky Radio, alternately. Live all morning.”
Speech therapist
Jordi thinks it is a shame that he is no longer allowed on a channel in the evening. “I no longer have afternoon and evening shifts as before and RTL has to offer. I will have either morning either or afternoon or evening. I can sleep in more often and that is nice, yes.”
So he has to go from RTL to the speech therapist. “I have not been living in the Achterhoek since I was eighteen. I used to speak flat. Then the accent stayed pretty with me and I am also proud of that, because I am still a real Achterhoeker.”
Voice coach
They don’t like that emphasis in Hilversum. “I did have a voting coach when I started at SBS and even at RTL I have to go to a speech therapist again, because there they are a bit stricter. So again.”
“I don’t understand what it is. They still want to go over to get the outliers out. I feel I am talking quite ABN in the meantime, but I still have to sit with a speech therapist.”