It is almost inevitable that the Renze Klamer blunder will lead to the dismissal of Peter van der Vorst as television boss of RTL 4, thinks media journalist Mark Koster. “One hundred percent.”
RTL 4 boss Peter van der Vorst has made a huge mistake: he prefers to muddle through with RTL Tonight over retaining his greatest talk show talent, namely Renze Klamer. According to critics, it is mainly an ego thing: Peter simply does not want to admit that his TV baby and prestige project has failed incredibly. He’s in denial.
‘One hundred percent!’
TV authority Tina Nijkamp wonders what Peter’s boss DPG Media will do now. “Do you think he will be fired because of this?” she asks in the podcast De Mediaweek.
Her colleague Mark Koster, media columnist for De Telegraaf, responds decisively. “One hundred percent. Of course he will be fired! Look, at Ajax you are kicked out if you don’t score enough, but what is it in Hilversum that if you score very poorly you can just stay put?”
‘Off the field’
It’s absurd how long Peter gets, Mark thinks. “The dynamic in sports is: ‘No, stay seated, we are behind the trainer!’, but even here the players are already walking out of the field! They are no longer even behind the trainer! Humberto and Beau then say: ‘Yes, too bad’, but they also don’t say: ‘This is a great program!’”
Tina: “No, of course not, but no one thinks so. Of course they think it’s terrible too.”
Mark: “You can certainly say in the pyramid of the decision level: ‘Peter, you’ve been doing it for a few years, you haven’t done anything in recent months! What’s happening with you?’ It’s commercial TV, right?”
Football
Tina thinks it makes a difference. “Yes, but I always think things move very quickly in football. I especially think it is bad that Peter does not intervene now, but that he stubbornly persists and that is the arrogance of RTL. At RTL there is a very strong club behind the scenes who have been in the same place for years and are friends.”
Mark: “Maybe we are too friendly and protect each other. There is uniformity in taste.”
Tina: “They all think it’s fantastic, but not us as viewers. No one dares to say: ‘Guys, you’re wrong, this isn’t going well.’ And if you do, like Renze, you will get into an argument and an unworkable situation.”
‘Where’s my money?’
Peter will soon be screwed, Mark thinks. “I think at some point a boss will walk in and say, ‘Where’s my money? I paid 1.1 billion for this TV channel! What are you doing?!’”
Tina: “I think his stubbornness is killing him and that turns into arrogance. I often hear from producers that RTL is very difficult to work with. That they are people who, because they have a good market share, find few other people as inspiring as themselves.”
Mark: “And with this Tina Nijkamp demolishes the RTL top!”
Hot underfoot
Does Private Boss Evert Santegoeds also think that Peter will be kicked out? “Well, I think the ground is going to be a bit hot under his feet, but he continues to hold firmly to the idea that things will turn out well with RTL Tonight. He has to show that,” he says in the podcast Strictly Private.
Co-host Jordi Versteegden: “But how? That is impossible to reverse, I think?”
Evert: “No, and if you already lose your best presenter and haven’t saved him by saying: ‘Okay, we’ll just go back to your show’, then you’re still playing high.”
High on horseback
Peter is acting so strangely, Evert thinks. “Apparently he thinks he is on a high horse and that he can do all this, previously with the German bosses and now with the Belgian ones. We will see what that will bring. The names of his successors are already circulating, but that seems a bit early to me.”
Finally, what Johan Derksen thinks about it? He says in Today Inside: “That Belgian boss of his is good at arithmetic…”