Peter van der Vorst, the channel boss of RTL 4, is in quite a bit of trouble, according to Angela de Jong. She states that the programming of his family channel is over. “It’s going wrong.”
RTL 4 radically changed its programming at the start of the corona crisis: GTST went back from five to four evenings a week and the number of programs in prime time was reduced from two to one. How was that filled? The remaining program was stretched to an hour and a half, just like the late talk show after it.
Everything takes too long
Now that the corona crisis is over, RTL 4 is still sticking to this so-called ‘blockbuster strategy’. One small detail: the corona crisis is long gone. Why the channel still sticks to it is obvious: two extended programs per evening are much cheaper than three shorter programs.
However, this strategy is now starting to turn against the channel. Eva Jinek experienced a free fall downwards, because her program became ridiculously long at one point, sometimes up to 1 hour and 45 minutes (!) per evening. And people are also starting to grumble about the long shows on prime time: one and a half hours Help Mijn Man Is Klusser is considered too long.
‘Fut seems out’
Angela de Jong, the feared TV columnist of the AD, thinks that channel boss Peter van der Vorst should intervene. “The energy seems a bit out at RTL. If you don’t get one series of Expedition Robinson, you will get the other and then it’s either Help Mijn Man Is Klusser or you name it what they all throw in,” she says in the AD Media podcast.
She continues: “It’s all an hour and a half, so there aren’t many flavors. And then you get an hour and a half talk show. For a long time they were able to score reasonably well with that, but now you see that it drops down on many evenings.”
‘Go invest!’
Media journalist Marcus den Blanken fully agrees. “We have now moved on, the takeover has not gone through, investments can be made again and I am still watching Help Mijn Man Is Klusser for an hour and a half. Yes sorry! And GTST is still gone on Friday.”
He continues: “It’s about time you said at some point: ‘We’re going to do something new again and we’re going to give those programs a normal length again.’ I was watching De Verraders and that has already taken 1 hour and 19 minutes on Videoland (without commercials, ed.). I don’t know how long those broadcasts will be on TV.”
Colleague Dennis Jansen: “That is really impossible.”
“Do something fun!”
RTL 4 should refresh the schedule, Marcus thinks. “Do something fun. We used to have the TV Kantine in between. That was also a program of half an hour.”
Angela: “Help Mijn Man Is Klusser is in its 384th season. And again John van den Heuvel with Kidnapped. Know I Much is also continuous. In the past, and that wasn’t even that long ago, you had Divorce or the Kruys Family or Girl of Pleasure on Sunday evening.”
Wear and tear on RTL 4?
What does she think Peter should do? “Shorter programs and make sure you do something on RTL 4. It really goes… Down the drain is very heavy, but you can really see the wear on it.”
SBS 6 suddenly picks up quite a bit, so RTL 4 can’t sit back. “So you can see that happening a bit now, because SBS is fairly steady and RTL really lives too long on proven successes from the past. We’ve seen that before in history. Then at some point things go horribly wrong.”
Marcus concludes: “SBS is now simply overtaking RTL on a regular basis and that is really writing on the wall.”
AD Media podcast
You can listen to the AD Media podcast below: