Art Rooijakkers does not regret quitting as presenter of News of the Day, which is becoming a permanent fixture of SBS 6. “It was too much Opinion of the Day for me.”
News of the Day is doing well. The right-wing TV news of SBS 6 is a success under the leadership of Thomas van Groningen and that is why they have been given the green light to continue in 2026. Isn’t Art Rooijakkers disappointed that he has stopped hosting this section? It could have given him job security for a very long time.
‘Not my place’
Art still has a warm heart for the program. “I still see it regularly,” he says at the desk Show news. “You can also see that Thomas is like a fish in water, with a kind of twinkle in his eye. The editors are working really hard on it, so I wish them the best.”
Does the presenter have no regrets? “No. The difference is: I was not in my place at that desk. Then at a certain point you have to be honest with yourself. It was an adventure to start it. I really started with a different idea. I thought: I am going to do this for the coming years, but it was not my place.”
Opinion of the day
Most people think that Art quit because News of the Day became too right-wing populist for him. He says: “I don’t think it was my place because the program is called News of the Day and I always assumed it would be more the news of the day, but it became more Opinion of the Day, and I felt less at home with that.”
“When a program is developing and it still needs to grow, you also have to be honest about: am I the guy who can take the program to some kind of new level? I don’t think I was.”
Friction
Art is not the only one who left News of the Day, because his former colleague Malou Petter also left. Many people do not want to be on television when Telegraaf journalist Wierd Duk is there. Does that have anything to do with it?
“No, when a program is developing, it is also part of the process that it sometimes takes a while to rub together. Without friction there is no shine, that happened in front of the scenes, like with Wierd, but also behind the scenes.”