In the past, Rob Goossens once had an extremely serious collision with Peter van der Vorst. “It touched me so deeply that I canceled RTL Boulevard 45 minutes in advance.”
A home game for Peter van der Vorst: RTL’s powerful content director will be in this week Veronica Superguide interviewed by one of his own people, namely Rob Goossens from RTL Boulevard. “Of course we have known each other for a few years. I hope that helps,” laughs the powerful TV bobo in the television magazine.
Peter van der Mol
Peter makes a striking revelation in the interview, namely that he once called Rob to order after giving his independent opinion: “I have also been angry myself – at you, for example, because I thought you had said something harmful about a colleague. But I think I apologized for that.”
A very curious anecdote. After all, Rob is at the desk at RTL Boulevard to give his independent opinion, but apparently that is less desirable when it comes to RTL colleagues. We are of course not used to this kind of action from a former journalist like Peter van der Vorst. What are these John de Mol-like practices?
Rob responds
Rob and Peter do not discuss it further in the interview. What about that phone call? When asked, the TV expert says: “At the time, that took place about 45 minutes before a Boulevard broadcast and the basic question was, or at least that’s how it felt to me, whether I had the right to say everything about RTL colleagues. ”
He continues: “We disagreed, to put it mildly. The fact that the management thought I was less independent than I imagined touched me so deeply that I immediately informed Boulevard that I would no longer do that evening’s broadcast. In the end, the compiler managed to pep me up and hopefully the viewer didn’t notice anything.”
Independent
It raises the question of whether Rob still feels free to give his independent opinion in RTL Boulevard after such a reprimand. He states that ‘of course no one in the world is completely independent’, but: “I strive to be as independent as possible. In my contract with Boulevard, I have always had this explicitly recorded.”
According to Rob, it is not the case that he is now semi-gagged behind the desk. “I swear on Linda de Mol’s children that that was the only time in now more than five hundred times Boulevard that I thought: okay, so apparently I can’t say everything. I have never been suspended or anything like that, even though I would have thought that was completely justified after my Tino Martin slip-up.”
Talked out
Rob has talked it out with Peter. “When we later talked it over at his office, Peter fortunately repeated that I am indeed independent and that made it okay for me. That has also been laid down in black and white in my contracts since then. So yes, I feel free to say what I want at Boulevard and that is worth a lot to me.”
“Because let’s face it: if I have to hold back, I’d better sit down with another unnamed entertainment program. Are you still going to hell for voluntarily restricting your freedom of speech, but at least until then you can drive a Maserati.”
Eve Jinek?
Now, of course, there remains the question of what Peter was actually so angry about. Rob doesn’t want to say that (‘then I’ll make it bigger than it is’), but it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Peter’s fellow villager Eva Jinek is the reason for the conflict.
Eva was pissed off at Rob two years ago because of speculation in RTL Boulevard about a second pregnancy. The talk show diva was very bothered by the rumor and called Rob’s shoddy work. He then defended himself by blaming RTL, which in his view communicated very poorly.
