After the embarrassing first episode of Avastars, John de Mol is completely put through the wringer by RTL Boulevard. “Anyone who watched this deserves a ribbon!”
We are used to bad television on SBS 6, but John de Mol has now personally delivered a new lower limit: the cringeworthy Avastars. The program revolves around dancing and singing digital dolls, who seem to have escaped from a beta version of the first Sims game from the year 2000. The ratings and reviews? Shocking.
Did John get up?
Avastars’ colossal flop was yesterday’s opening news of the country’s most watched show section: RTL Boulevard. After an item with scathing comments from Jon Karthaus and Tina Nijkamp, show connoisseur Aran Bade was allowed to go wild. “Aran, we start with you. How do you think John got up this morning?” asks Frank Dane.
Aran to that: “I hope he got up, anyway. Yes, this is just dramatic. A really expensive flop, perhaps the most expensive flop of this century. Such a program costs, as Tina just said, almost a million euros per episode. I wonder what those costs are, because it feels like I was watching the Sims from back in the day.”
Big fallacy
It seems that John no longer knows what exactly he delivers, according to Aran. “I think a very big fallacy is being made and that really lies with Talpa. With these kinds of animation-driven puppets you cannot get a bond as an audience. I hear Nick Schilder say to a candy pink empty set: ‘I see a lot of femininity and colour.’ What does he see?!”
Aran thinks that Avastars has been blown too high in advance about Avastars. He probably refers to the countless items that competitor Shownieuws has dedicated to this. “I think there is an underlying bigger problem: there is a TV boss, a channel boss who, in my opinion, does not know how to make TV that affects people at home.”
Ribbon
Aran thinks that there is no question of a democratic process within John de Mol’s Talpa. “No one has said, ‘John, I wouldn’t do this’. I don’t think that’s possible.”
TV connoisseur Ron Vergouwen: “In any case, all people who have watched the program completely, they should almost receive a ribbon, I think. It was very bad.”
Despite the poor quality, SBS 6 sticks to Avastars. John does not remove the program from the tube. His Talpa says: “Of course we had hoped for more for this first broadcast of this innovative project. (…) But if you don’t take risks you never create anything new.”
North Korea
The only medium that puts a positive spin on Avastars’ flopping is – not surprisingly – John’s own Hart van Nederland. The news section should be in a quite colored article only positive reactions. “Think they would have found this very flashy in North Korea too ?”, screams AD media journalist Marcus den Blanken.
Shownieuws star Evert Santegoeds also raved about Avastars. Marcus: “That also made me laugh out loud. But then you still think: oh, it’s Evert. But Hart van Nederland used to be journalism, right?”
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