Wietze de Jager, now also known as Wietze de Klager thanks to RTL Boulevard, is close to a burnout, according to Patrick Kicken. “He is literally chronically fatigued right now.”
At the beginning of last year, 34-year-old Wietze de Jager, with a wife and three children at home, took over Radio 538’s most important show: the program during the morning rush hour. And now, with a fourth child on the way, he suddenly finds out that that is too much. Strange, since as a former host at Qmusic he already knew what it is like to carry such a show.
Chronic fatigue
Radio 538 now has to change the morning show for the umpteenth time. The good news is that Wietze will be replaced by Tim Klijn and Edwin Evers’ former sidekicks, namely Niels van Baarlen and Rick Romijn. The bad news is that the listener will have to listen to the unmotivated Wietze until after the summer.
And according to Patrick Kicken, the most important radio columnist in our country, that is very bad news. It has come to his attention that Wietze is indeed very unmotivated behind the microphone. He would be ‘chronically fatigued’.
“Take him away!”
It is therefore much better to kick Wietze straight out of the morning, says Patrick in his column Mouthpiece. All the more so because the listening figures are currently in very, very heavy weather. “Urgent action should be taken, but no, Wietze will only be replaced ‘after the summer’.”
He advises: “It came to my attention that Wietze de Jager is literally chronically tired doing the most important program of the day. Then let that guy recover as quickly as possible and remove the replacements from Veronica as of May 1, not just in August or September.”
Cost plate
It is also much better for the cost picture to send Wietze on holiday now, thinks Patrick. “Otherwise we can soon welcome him as the newest member at De Burn-out Club. Will it cost them a lot more money.”
According to media journalist Dennis Jansen, we shouldn’t exaggerate so much. “I do think he gets a lot over him, to be honest,” he says in the AD Media podcast. “I think he was just a little mistaken. That it comes in later. I understand that he does not want to commit himself to being a four-time father for a long period of time.”
Understanding of Angela
AD diva Angela de Jong also understands Wietze. “Maybe his wife couldn’t handle three little ones alone. It should also work in practice. You can run into that you think: I’m not made for this?”
Wietze’s initial proposal to go back to four days a week was very understandable, Angela thinks. “Even on television, there is no one who does a late night talk show from January to December. And Wietze gets the whole country over him, ‘because he’s a spoiled jerk’. While I think: how important is that job?”