Harm Edens doesn’t want to think about moving to RTL 4 again with Dit Was Het Nieuws. He would not easily embark on such a commercial adventure again. “There’s a smell there.”
The Harm Edens show Dit Was Het Nieuws can now be seen again on the public broadcaster, but from 2010 to 2015 the program was broadcast by the commercial RTL 4. The AvroTros no longer felt like it at the time. “’Thank you very much for the service provided, but we are going to do something different’ was the message.”
No success
Harm did not feel comfortable with the commercial people at all. “We switched to RTL and that was not an unqualified success. That was an environment where we did not belong. That smell of the program in front of you is still there and that was quite difficult.”
Isn’t he afraid about the cuts in public broadcasting? “I am 64 years old. I worry about completely different things.”
Climate
What is Harm concerned about? “About democracy, algorithm terror, children vaping themselves to death. Things are going pretty bad in the world. That’s why I’m now visiting the theaters with climate lectures.”
This Was Het Nieuws will be celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in May. An achievement? “Well, it’s mainly a matter of not leaving. An endlessly long period of time. It’s special, but I don’t think it’s an achievement.”
