Peter van der Vorst, RTL’s program boss, is silent now that the report on the Voice abuses has come out. Why is that? “They just want the show back on TV next year!”
The Voice of Holland producer ITV is under heavy fire now that the report paid by them about the abuses at the program has been published. Media celebrities such as Angela de Jong, Bert van der Veer, Tina Nijkamp and Yvonne Coldeweijer have the feeling that the parties involved are mainly busy sweeping streets clean.
Peter hides
Peter van der Vorst, RTL’s program boss, is keeping quiet in the meantime. He promised a year ago at Beau van Erven Dorens’ talk show table that he would ‘watch from a distance’ at the investigation, and said: “What I find dangerous is to keep questioning that investigation. No one has an interest in bad research being done.”
Exactly that fragment was broadcast again last night in Beau’s talk show. The presenter then: “Just in his defense: this was a while ago and then I think we all thought it would be a very large investigation and now it turns out to be completely focused because it is of interest to the stakeholders and shareholders. ITV.”
Criticism of RTL
However, Sébas Diekstra, who assists victims of The Voice, thinks that Peter was already acting suspiciously naive. “Very honest, Beau: when Peter van der Vorst said this, many lawyers even said in columns: how can a lawyer, as an impartial club, conduct this investigation? Those lawyers have already warned about it. The client decides.”
Beau thinks that RTL cannot be satisfied with this research. “Isn’t this what RTL wants? RTL actually just wants to have answers to what happened there across the entire width from 2010 to 2020? How it could have happened, who are responsible for it, what victims are there? (…) I really feel like: what is this actually?”
‘It’s about money’
It bothers Beau. “One thing is certain: it is a very woolly, incomplete and unsatisfactory report. It can go in the trash. What now? Should we disappoint all those victims? It was all for nothing? (…) It’s all about money in the end. And not about the victims,” he says in his show, which – strikingly – cannot be looked back.
Tina Nijkamp, former SBS boss, sets up On 1 that it really is all about money. “This is not about two decades, but about tens of millions of euros that ITV, RTL and John de Mol are missing out on. It involves a lot of money and I think that is expressed a bit from the report, that it is very much about money and not about the victims.”
Enter into conversation
RTL has announced in a statement that it wants to enter into a conversation with ITV. Tina: “I immediately thought: well, you should have had that conversation a year ago. (…) I think that’s a bit of a strange reaction of: ‘We’re going to talk.’ It’s more that they say: ‘We didn’t know anything.’ I think this may also be legal.”
Tina fills in her Instagram stories indicates that RTL is also very dependent on ITV. She writes: “RTL has many ITV programs in its schedule: I Know A Lot with Beau, The Perfect Picture with Tijl, Beat The Champions, Oh What A Year, Addicted. So quite dependent. Oh yes, the big RTL hit Married at First Sight is also made by ITV.”
Back on TV soon
Ronald Molendijk suspects that Peter just wants to continue with The Voice. He says in Show news: “I’m sure it will be back on the tube pretty soon. RTL is also just a commercial company and they see what they now lack in advertising income. (…) They say: okay, we have now received a kind of manifesto of what we have to do.”
He thinks that RTL uses the recommendations in the report to bring back The Voice in a ‘safe’ way. “If you kick off The Voice next year with a retrospective in which Peter van der Vorst says: ‘That’s how we’re going to do it, we at RTL say it can go back and this is a look behind the scenes’, then it will result in a viewing figure record where makes you retarded.”
And that’s what it’s all about, says Ronald. “A chip manufacturer pays a lot of money for that.”