Antoinette Hertsenberg receives a reprimand from Angela de Jong after her statements about television colleague Dionne Stax. “It came across as somewhat condescending.”
It is a bitter pill for Antoinette Hertsenberg: her program Radar has been relegated from NPO 2 to NPO 1 and she has lost half of her number of viewers. The reason for the move? She would attract too old viewers. That is why the broadcasting top has decided to replace it with a program from the elderly broadcaster MAX.
Jan lashes out
Antoinette was not really afraid of competition with Van Onschatbare Waarde, the MAX program in question. She did not even know the title of the Dionne Stax show in Eva Jinek’s talk show: “We will soon be opposite ehhh, ehhhh, ehhhh, Dionne Stax with ehhh… Now I just lost the name. The Value Unknown, or something.”
The Radar star even factored in the fact that she might even surpass Dionne. Well, that didn’t work out. Dionne was twice stronger than Antoinette with 1.7 million viewers. MAX boss Jan Slagter: “Mrs Hertsenberg recently acted a bit disdainful about Van Onschatbare Waarde, she didn’t even know it. Maybe now ?.”
Condescending
Angela de Jong understands Jan’s sneer, she says in the AD Media podcast. “Well, that’s for him. I don’t think she meant it that way, but it did come across as somewhat condescending from Antoinette Hertsenberg. Again: she really didn’t mean it that way, but I understand that Jan can’t resist knocking this one out.”
Dionne’s ratings are to take your hat off to, Angela thinks. “That is really fantastic, yes. That is really very nice.”
‘Half!’
According to Angela, it is a travesty that Radar has been demoted. “From NPO 1 to NPO 2 is a relegation. You then know that your viewing figures will go down. Well, that happened. It’s half, isn’t it? Half of what they normally have. It is a program that has very clear public value and that you know is number one, it reaches one and a half million.”
But people can just flip to the second one if they want, right? That is possible, but many people stick around after the news for convenience, says Angela. “That is how it works. The majority of people start on NPO 1, watch the news and think: hey, Dionne Stax, nice program.”
Flattering
Dionne’s ratings are justified, Angela thinks. “It is also a nice program, Van Onschatbare Waarde. You’re negotiating a bit at home and then you know that it does indeed go very well or go wrong, like last week, when that woman sold her horse a little too cheap. She left 15 thousand euros behind!”
Yet she fears for Radar. Angela takes into account declining ratings. “If I’m being honest, I’m a little afraid that this is flattering, because they’ve done a lot of promos, given a lot of interviews. Antoinette Hertsenberg was with Jinek, was in our newspaper and I don’t know much. If that goes away soon…”
