Can Arjen Lubach eventually return to the public broadcaster if he is unable to appeal to the RTL viewer? Yes, Johan Derksen thinks. “But then he can no longer pay his house.”
RTL 4 boss Peter van der Vorst has a life-size problem: the new late evening of the channel is a flop. Arjen Lubach is not the success that was hoped for, but the subsequent RTL Tonight is a historically large flop. Tina Nijkamp has suggested putting Lubach after RTL Tonight, but that would of course be at the expense of him.
Insane demands
What should Arjen soon, if it doesn’t work on RTL 4? He is very expensive for that channel. “Lubach has set crazy requirements,” says Johan Derksen in the podcast Greetings from Grolloo. “I believe that I brought forty people around them all of them.”
He continues: “That is a crazy expensive show for a talk show and Mr. Lubach who immediately converted that into real estate, because nothing capitalist is strange to him.”
Back to the NPO?
Can Arjen go back to the NPO? “Yes, but then he has to settle for the Balkenende standard and I don’t know if he can still pay that expensive house.”
Then he repeats his hobby horse: “I don’t like him either. I can’t laugh at Lubach. He does an American talk show with ways and I think it’s a bit of a clown. I am completely objective to Lubach, because I don’t know that boy at all, but I can’t like it.”
Pussy presentation
What does Johan think that RTL Tonight is definitively flopped? “Yes, they completely burned down in one week. That also has to do with the somewhat patente presentation by buying all kinds of people everywhere as clients and those clients are now silent on such a desk. They can cancel their prayer and then we go to the next section again.”
He continues: “It is a misunderstanding first class. And you can blame Peter van der Vorst, director of RTL, because he has come up with that and he has attracted people who are known in the world that they know a lot about making talk shows. Well, that does not appear in any way when you are watching.”
Not a good format
This is “not the right format,” says Johan. “And Peter van der Vorst not only had a misunderstanding with this talk show, but he also brought in Lubach, which is a real VPRO artist. And his jokes and his humor do not go into the RTL viewer at all.”
“He has now also brought in Linda de Mol with an expensive show about brilliant brains and that does not really work. So I am curious if the Belgian owner of RTL will not speak to him soon, because that is quite something, if you have three of this kind of expensive programs that do not score.”