In reality, the NATO top lasted barely two days, but the NATO top lasted almost two years on TV. That was at least my experience, and I suspect that NOS presenter Albert Bos thinks the same thing about it. In fact, I think the NATO summit is still taking place in his head. After he had to beat the first evening of the conference from Madurodam, he was allowed to return to the NOS studio the second day. There he had to alternate interviews with studio guests with comments on images from the World Forum for hours in succession. Then his head appeared in a square in the bottom left of the screen, which was reminiscent of the type of content in which YouTubers capture their live response to a strange video.
In the case of Bos, that reaction often laved somewhere between annoyance, shame and defeat, because the broadcast was not very smooth. At times when the image did not match the sound or there was too quickly from one room to the other, his disapproving look was always there. “It’s chaos,” he said. Or: “Just rest in the tent.” Or, if the camera chose a very interesting angle: “Yes, that’s the ceiling of the World Forum.”
But there were also times when the reason for Bos’ Grimassen was probably in the texts he had to listen to all day. He shook his head when Donald Trump CNN and The New York Times “Fake News”, “Disgusting” and “Terrible Groups of People” mentioned. In the meantime, our current prime minister was tacitly next to the US president; Our former prime minister had referred to him earlier in the day as “daddy”. I was happy that at least there was still some who reacted hooddies to Daddy’s attacks on the press, but that the press itself should come and not our political leaders can be called careful.
The time awareness of Dick Schoof is radically different from mine as a TV viewer. When in the evening News hour (NOS/NTR) was asked how he had experienced that Trump led himself out about journalists in his presence, he replied: “Fortunately it didn’t take too long.” Furthermore, in this specific case he did not know who was right, said Schoof. The reason for Trumps anger was CNN’s reporting and The New York Times About the American bombs in Iran; Schoof did not have the necessary information to “make an opinion about it”. Then be honest and just say that you didn’t want to make Daddy angry.
Yellow car
Without the live reactions from Bos, the interview became unbearable, so I switched to another man who increasingly lives in his own reality for a change: Tom Egbers. Egbers has been able to make some programs for the NOS since last year and for the time being consistently opts for titles that sound like booklets for children in the age category eight to ten years. The first program was called Toms Sports Storiesbut the emphasis was more on Tom than on the sports stories. It was memorable television. For example, there was an excerpt in which Egbers sang a song in his yellow car that was called ‘I’m Scum’ and closed the first (and only) season by reciting the whole ‘Sonnet 18’ from Shakespeare.
Toms Sports Stories is now succeeded by Toms Derby’s. As the title suggests, Tom goes in Toms Derby’s Along Derby’s, because Tom loves Derby’s. In episode two, Egbers visited a derby on the Scottish Hebriden. A nice derby, Egbers judged. “It is actually not possible here.” As he drew that conclusion, he looked out on the Atlantic Ocean. “And this is why I love football,” he said, what made me wonder if he saw the same thing as me. I only saw water. But perhaps Egbers’ head always takes place a game of football. You can find it worse.