It must be painful for Arjen Lubach that he no longer plays an important role in the run-up to the coming elections. He is decimated by Pauw & De Wit. “The viewing figures are really too low.”
Arjen Lubach was an influential TV maker at the public broadcaster, but since his move to RTL 4 he has had little impact on the public debate. That will hurt him a bit, especially with the elections approaching. That RTL contract has earned him a multi-million dollar villa, but what if he is soon finished on TV?
Lubach ducks away
Arjen’s viewing figures have been under pressure for some time, but he is currently very often dropping into the daily viewing figures top 25. The cause? According to ratings authority Tina Nijkamp, this is due to the success of direct competitor Pauw & De Wit. Hart van Nederland also suffers from this.
“Hart van Nederland and Lubach seem to be very bothered by the success of Pauw & De Wit. That is of course the opposite,” she explains in her podcast Tina’s TV Update.
10:07 p.m
The starting times have a lot of influence on the scores, according to Tina. “Hart of the Netherlands starts around 10:40 PM to 10:45 PM and then Pauw & De Wit is fully busy. Lubach is of course also on the schedule from 10:00 PM, but often starts at 10:07 PM and Pauw & De Wit at 10:15 PM, so it is also a very large part of the schedule.”
She continues: “You can now see in the viewing figures top 20 – yesterday again, and I have noticed this for a long time – that they are very low in the top 20 every time. Yesterday in places 18 and 19, Lubach and Hart van Nederland, and they barely score 500 thousand viewers. Lubach even slightly below.”
Far too little
According to Tina, one thing is certain: RTL 4 cannot be satisfied with this. “That is of course far too low for these types of expensive programs. Hart van Nederland does not even have an advertising break. So it really has to score more again.”
She concludes: “Hart van Nederland and Lubach are suffering from the success of Pauw & De Wit. That conclusion seems to be correct.”