The men of Today Inside have made history. They are the first program ever to win the Golden Televizier Ring twice, with 74 percent (!) of the votes.
It is a historic TV evening: the men from Today Inside have won the Golden Televizier Ring with a monster victory. They already did that in 2011, when they still broadcast on RTL 7, and you are actually no longer allowed to compete for the TV prize. However, because of the anniversary of the Televizier gala, all programs were given another chance.
Crazy
After an intensive campaign, Wilfred Genee was thrilled when VI emerged as the winner with 74 percent of the votes. “René just made a very important comment: ‘It was a close call!’ Hahahaha!”, he says during the broadcast on NPO 1.
Then he takes the viewer into the history of VI. “In 2008 I came to the office of the CEO of RTL. I walked in and he said: ‘You know, Wilfred, talking about football the way you do it, we absolutely no longer believe in that. Thanks for the effort and see you soon!’”
“What are you going to do?”
And then? Wilfred: “He walked outside and said to me: ‘Wilfred, what are you going to do? Because you no longer have a job.’ Then I said: ‘I’m going to call Johan Derksen now and tell him to call the editor-in-chief of Voetbal International and that we will simply make our own program again and we will be back on the air in three months.’”
“And three months later we were back on the air. We got no income, there were three of us, we brought in René, Hans joined, later Jan Boskamp joined and three years later we won the Televizier-Ring. Look, here he is, that very ugly thing! And then three months later we had a Christmas drink.”
Talk about football
Suddenly, RTL boss Bert Habets had a very different view. “And then the same CEO came up to me and hit me on the shoulder and said: ‘Wilfred, I’ve always said it! Talking about football, that’s the future!’ Then I said, ‘No, Bert, you didn’t say that. You said, ‘It’s done!’”
“Then he said: ‘You will have a contract with us forever, because it is very good!’ I said, ‘No, Bert, because if our ratings get really bad, we’ll be kicked out and that makes sense, because you’re in charge of that!’ Very strange, then Bert suddenly saw someone else in the queue and we never spoke to each other again.”
‘Believe in it!’
The moral of the story? “What I want to say is: sometimes you have to believe in something! We have been doing it with this team for almost 25 years, a lot of people who have been working here for a long time. With Wieke in make-up, with Rick in production, with Nancy, we have so many boys and girls who have been working here for such a long time.”
“We are the three faces, but we do it with a very small and very special team! I would like to thank them all for it!”