It is no longer news that RTL Tonight scores extremely poorly, but that does not mean that the scores are stable. In fact: Beau van Erven Dorens once again sets a new low record.
It is one of the big RTL 4 flops in years, but channel boss Peter van der Vorst sees this as his TV baby and is too proud to pull the plug. The big question now is what will happen sooner: will Peter finally repent or will his bosses intervene and will a moving box destined for the canal belt be placed on his desk?
‘Really very little’
TV authority Tina Nijkamp points out that the late evening of RTL 4 is still in tatters. She speaks of ‘Wednesday minced meat day’ with a pitiful 239 thousand viewers for RTL Tonight. “The show has never scored so low before.”
She continues in her podcast: “Really very little. Unbelievable. Yes, that is of course not going so well. Lubach will of course be over next week, so I hope they will score a little better then, but things are not going very well there.”
‘It’s because of Sander!’
TV critic Victor Vlam thinks this is due to one of the guests at the desk. “Sander Schimmelpenninck is the worst scoring interpreter of RTL Tonight. Last night he was at the desk and the program reached a low of 239,000 viewers. The only other time at the desk (9 September) was also a low: 291,000.”
He continues X: “Sander’s poor scores are no surprise. A large number of the people he calls stupid are RTL viewers. The real question is why Peter van der Vorst thought it was good to give RTL Tonight an elitist profile. That turned out to be a really big mistake.”
Amsterdam bubble
Is RTL Tonight far too far away from the RTL viewer? Victor thinks so. “The management is simply too much in their own Amsterdam bubble. But the viewer is merciless.”
TV critics agree that the best solution would be to make Renze Klamer the figurehead of late evening, put his name back on the facade and exchange the desk for a table. However, there is one person standing in the way: Peter van der Vorst. What a blunder…