Paul de Leeuw will still be seen this year with his traditional Sinterklaas show at the NPO, a spokesperson says after an internal blunder. But after 2026? That is still unclear…
Entertainment for the sake of entertainment? The NPO would rather not broadcast that. Distracting television is only permitted there if it has beneficial side effects, i.e. if it contains an educational element, or if it ensures that people also watch informative programs. That is not the case at Sint & De Leeuw, according to the NPO, and that is why it is going to stop.
‘We don’t want this’
At least, that is what the NPO itself writes in a report that can be found online and that Tina Nijkamp has distributed on her analysis channel. “Based on the results in 2024 and 2025, the Sint & De Leeuw program must be scrapped,” it said.
It all seems to have been released a bit too prematurely, because Omroep MAX boss Jan Slagter knew nothing about it and the NPO itself is now backing down. “The text from the 2025 Review about Sint & De Leeuw is not how we want to communicate about the progress of individual programs, certainly not to the makers involved,” says a spokesperson.
After 2026?
The NPO will investigate why this text ended up on the internet. “We are investigating this further internally,” says the press officer The Telegraph.
However, the spokesperson cannot promise that the program will still be shown after 2026 and that causes irritation at MAX. He told the newspaper: “Sint & De Leeuw has been a tradition highly appreciated by viewers for years, which also had more than 1.4 million viewers last December and which we would like to preserve.”
Blunder
Tina thinks that the NPO is blundering terribly. “It’s still going on,” she writes analysis channel. “Great for the viewer and Omroep Max, but what a BLUNDER from the NPO. And then that text from the spokesperson: ‘The retrospective text is not how we want to communicate about the future, certainly not towards makers.’”
“Duh! Don’t put it there. It’s just PUBLIC on the NPO site. Phew.”