Niels van der Laan and Jeroen Woe sometimes delete items from their ratings hit Even Tot Hier because their satirical colleague Arjen Lubach has already covered them in the days before. “Lubach service.”
The new season of Even Tot Hier is about to start again and that is quite confrontational for Arjen Lubach. The high viewing figures of Jeroen Woe and Niels van der Laan prove that there is still a demand for good satire on TV, but that it is purely Arjen who no longer knows how to charm that target group. His viewing figures have been very disappointing since his RTL transfer.
Doubles with Arjen
Jeroen and Niels nevertheless think it is very important to keep a close eye on Arjen’s program. One of their editors, Owen Schumacher, is always on Lubach duty during the Even Tot Hier season.
He tells in the Television that he always looks at Lubach to see whether he covers topics that Even Tot Hier has planned. “If Lubach approaches it in a different way, it is no problem that we duplicate. But if the items are too similar, what we do can feel second-hand or even copied.”
Item in trash
At such times, the editors choose a different topic, Owen explains. As a result, an item he has worked hard on may not make it to the broadcast. Not a problem, he thinks: “I like to be of service to Niels and Jeroen. Because ultimately their heads are on TV, they have the final say.”
Sometimes an item is broken even on the day of the broadcast, his colleague Niels explains. “We once had a song called Drone Landt, to the tune of Droomland by André Hazes. We had soldiers singing it as a clip.”
Laughter is gone
Initially that seemed like a good plan, according to Niels. “We really liked that when we made it, but when we saw it again, we knew: this wasn’t going to be it. The smile was gone.”
And then? “Then we decided to scrap the video and sing it ourselves.”
