Khalid Kasem surprised a few weeks ago with his performance in Today Inside. What does a progressive TV star do on the conservative counterpart of his own talk show?
Just before the new season of Khalid & Sophie started, Khalid Kasem suddenly sat down at the conservative talk show Today Inside. It is striking because both programs are counterparts of each other. He probably wasn’t there to advertise, but why?
Six for Khalid
Victor Vlam, the male Angela de Jong with Mari van de Ven-like features, has the answer. He thinks it is a ‘sensible strategy’ to profile himself. “I think Khalid Kasem is a presenter who scores a six. He’s not a super good presenter. I think he realizes that too.”
He continues in his podcast The Communicados: “There is no one who will confuse him with the new Jeroen Pauw or the new Matthijs van Nieuwkerk. And only for the top talents there is any real job security in Hilversum. There is job security for Eva Jinek. There is always a place for her somewhere. But for Khalid Kasem?”
Job security
Probably not, Victor warns. “If it ends with Khalid & Sophie, then the question is whether they can do anything else at BNNVARA. So I think what he’s trying to do is mainly try to generate that job security by being the interpreter of the BNNVARA sound.”
He continues: “It is of course a decidedly left-wing broadcaster. That is also why people become members of that broadcaster. They want to hear that sound too. And Khalid Kasem, as a former lawyer, is actually very capable of expressing that sound. This may be the case in other talk shows, for example.”
Hard attack
That must be the reason why he took part in Today Inside, and previously also in De Oranjezomer, according to Victor. “He can interpret that sound. And with that he actually has the role that Marcel van Dam, for example, had in the past at VARA. It was not just the chairman, it was also someone who made that sound heard in other programs and in columns.”
Khalid came into VI with a fairly hard attack on Caroline van der Plas. His future after Khalid & Sophie, if he is allowed to remain on television? “Then he can, for example, make a documentary series about certain left-wing topics, left-wing themes that are being exposed.”