RTL Boulevard is actually a bit of the Op1 of commercials. You blink with your eyes and there is another presenter behind the desk. “I really don’t understand that.”
Bridget Maasland, Daphne Bunskoek, Eddy Zoëy and Vivienne van den Assem are the regular presenters of RTL Boulevard. They present the program for a week and are then three weeks off. But why is that anyway? You used to know every evening that Albert Verlinde and Beau van Erven Dorens were waiting for you there.
“Why are they doing that?”
According to Raymond Mens, the well-known American connoisseur of Today Inside, it is very inconvenient. “It is also about creating a feeling. What feeling do you want to give people? And that includes fixed times, but it also includes regular people,” he says in the authoritative podcast The Communicados.
He continues: “For example, I think a program like RTL Boulevard should have the same presentation duo every day, unless you have fallen down the stairs once, then you stay at home. But I don’t understand why they change that. And that was – yes now I sound very old – it was not the case before.”
Hans, Mireille and Viola
In the past, television was much more recognizable, says Raymond. “Then you had Hans and Mireille every day, who did coffee time. And then there was Viola in the evening, who did The 5 Hours Show. And in America you see that too, that people are on television all year round. And VI does that too.”
RTL Boulevard can learn something from that, says Raymond. “I don’t understand why that has to be alternated continuously with different presenters. At Op1 I still understand it from the broadcasters, but you prefer to have a bit of recognisability.”
Lazy stars
Victor Vlam, the opinion tornado that would not go wrong in Hélène Hendriks’ talk show this summer, explains why every program nowadays has a whole battalion of presenters. “It is the case in the Netherlands that it is difficult for television channels to compete on salary. For example, the NPO simply cannot offer more than the beams standard.”
Then you quickly start competing on terms of employment, says Victor. “What they can offer is that you have to work less. And that has had a major impact on how Dutch television works, because it actually ensures that a major television star really has a lot of free time.”
Mega holidays
According to Victor, that’s where all those mega holidays of the stars come from. “Eva Jinek has of course often been put through the wringer because she only works six months a year, while she has a salary of 1.2 million.”
But she is by no means the only one: even all those RTL Boulevard stars are not exactly workhorses. “And Arjen Lubach has one season of ten weeks and one season of nine weeks. That’s not even half the year! Dutch television stars are actually very lazy compared to television stars abroad.”