John Williams is struggling with the same problem as Eva Jinek with his program Help Mijn Man Is Klusser, says TV expert Rob Goossens. “Those broadcasts really take too long!”
RTL 4 introduced a very handy saving measure at the start of the corona crisis: the so-called ‘blockbuster strategy’. Where the channel used to always broadcast two programs and a late talk show after GTST, since then it has only been one program and a l̶a̶t̶e̶ long talk show.
Help, Show Takes Too Long
It was swallowed by the viewer during the corona crisis: he was glued to the couch with three face masks. Now that people have a normal life again, viewing figures experts notice that those extremely long broadcasts no longer work well. Eva Jinek in particular, who sometimes has to fill 1 hour and 40 minutes at the peak, is the victim.
However, Rob Goossens, the TV connoisseur of RTL Boulevard, also points to the elongated Help Mijn Man Is Klusser by John Williams. “I watched that on hold and I found myself holding the remote in my hands the entire time to fast forward. It appeals to me a bit,” he says The BLVD Podcast.
Sparkle away
According to Rob, everyone thinks so. “I was talking to some people about it yesterday and they also thought: it will take a long time, because it is now from 9.30 am to 10.30 am, of course, if you watch it live. It’s an hour if you watch it on Videoland. And that hasn’t always been the case. That is now the case for the third season, because they have adjusted some things after corona time.”
So he is referring to that blockbuster strategy. “Which made the major titles of RTL 4 last longer.”
Colleague Luuk Ikink: “Which is often successful, isn’t it?”
Rob: “There are a lot of programs where it has worked well. But I feel like maybe they’re taking the sparkle out of it a bit by stretching those Help Mijn Man Is Klusser episodes too long.”
Smeared
Luuk thinks that RTL 4 should make it shorter and more concise. “Maybe it’s spread out a bit too much. It is of course possible that the story is simply told in 45 minutes.”
Rob: “If you look at this week’s episode, couldn’t you have done this in an hour?”
Luuk: “Certainly, no, I think so.”
Rob: “And then we really wouldn’t have missed that much.”
End result
An hour and a half is especially a long time if the end result is a bit disappointing, says Rob. “Then you think: yes damn, I have been waiting an hour and a half for this?”
Luuk: “Then you either want to have an outburst in that relationship or you want some kind of… The building must have been refurbished enormously. But if all that is okay, then it might be a little bit of a disappointment.”
