It seems that RTL 4 has chosen not to throw Buddy Vedder to the lions after Marieke Elsinga’s image drama. “He’s not in the schedules yet.”
What do you do when one of your television stars has filmed an entire series, but it turned out really bad? You can broadcast it, but then it’s just a matter of waiting for all the muck to come loose. You can’t broadcast it either, but throwing a program into the trash unseen is of course destruction of capital.
Buddy in the summer?
At Marieke Elsinga, channel boss Peter van der Vorst recently opted for the first option, but that turned out really badly. Her program Alles is Muziek was so infantile – at one point we saw Irene Moors ramming on a shuffleboard – that Marieke is now associated with very bad television. An image drama.
Now Peter has to make such a choice again, namely with Buddy Vedder and his program Tulips from Antwerp. This music show was already broadcast in Flanders in the winter, but scored devastating reviews and ratings there. RTL 4 postponed the show; officially they had ‘planned for some time’ not to broadcast this show until the summer.
From postponement to cancellation?
But summer is almost starting and TV know-it-all Tina Nijkamp now discovers that Buddy is not included in the July schedules either. That leaves only the month of August, but the program has eight episodes and that would mean that there are also broadcasts in September with a weekly frequency. And that is the high season, so excluded.
Tina thinks it’s strange. She writes on her analysis channel: “I was still thinking: what about RTL 4’s Tulips from Antwerp programme? In Belgium, Buddy Vedder’s program has already been broadcast and flopped, but in the Netherlands it is still not in the RTL schedules. Not even high summer in July.”
‘Do not do it!’
Two media celebrities have already advised RTL 4 to delete Buddy, including AD media journalist Marcus den Blanken (‘this is perhaps the most horrible show of the past five years’) and channel star Luuk Ikink. “Why would you want to broadcast some kind of imminent flop from him?”
Tina thinks that RTL 4’s July schedules actually say enough. “I think this means that it will FOREVER remain hidden from the Dutch viewer. And it will never air here. Maybe also to protect Buddy. Wise decision I think.”
Fragment
The central artist in the first episode of Tulpen uit Antwerpen is another important reason to skip the show: