A blow of immense proportions on Tuesday afternoon, when after more than twelve years the end of coffee time was announced. There was some talk about ‘too low viewing figures’, ‘too high production costs’ and an ‘expiring contract’. The program can continue for another seven months, but on May 26, the iconic morning program will come to an end (again).
Presenters Quinty Trustfull and Vivian Slingerland started their introduction on Wednesday soberly. Quinty thought it was ‘a great pity’, and that was an understatement. But the responses they received were unanimously heartwarming. From Jochem Myer to the 3JS: everyone wanted to visit again. But Quinty persisted: it was just a bummer! Slingerland thought it was ‘just crap’ in a vulgar manner.
The presenters especially missed the family feeling. They weren’t alone. We also have coffee time taken for granted all these years, and blindly assumed that the program would always be there in difficult times. Because if we’re honest: there was no better program to get sick of than coffee time. A mandatory home working day was also colored by the delicious chatter in the background.
This week’s broadcasts were tied together from the highlights. On Tuesday, linguist Leonie Cornips was a guest to talk about a ‘Google Translate for animals’ (no more animal-friendly program than coffee time). Cornips turned out to be specialized in cow sounds, and had taken a cow quiz, in which Loretta and Quinty had to guess which boo belongs to which state of mind (‘That’s a real boo!’). After this we were also treated to Karin Bloemen, who came to give singing crochet lessons to Loretta, which allowed Quinty to ask questions such as: ‘Do you crochet differently when you do it singing?’
Not to mention the many highlights over the years. Think of the hallucinatory-hilarious conversation with De Jeugd van Nowadays (Loretta: ‘I was an asshole, a very nice song’), Jan Smit dancing the sirtaki, Peter Jan Rens jumping off a diving board or Yes-R letting Loretta and Rob Kamphues rap in the garden. Of course coffee time always an eye for the more serious work, because the light-hearted items were without any effort interspersed with mental problems of young people and plastic soup in the ocean.
You often didn’t even have to see it to know that it’s reassuring coffee timeuniverse was always there. What should we fall back on in the morning? good morning Netherlands? Too much Annemarie van Gaal and Uri Rosenthal. It Journal? Too few cow quizzes. The other channels? More repetitions.
It’s easy to be bathing about coffee time, but the program is just part of it. It has to be there, just as nice knowledge that it can be done for a while. Just relax in the morning, see what the day brings us today.
148 more episodes to go. I try not to miss a broadcast anymore.