Rob Kemps is proof that signing an exclusive TV contract is not always a blessing for celebrities, says Rob Goossens. “Then there is no longer an excuse to say: we are not going to do this.”
Where the lesser gods in the TV world hop from freelance job to freelance job, A-stars can count on mega contracts of up to five years. Rob Kemps is still far from an A-star, but in 2021 SBS 6 saw so much potential in him that they pushed a three-year contract in front of him in 2021. And he said yes.
Handyman Kemps
In retrospect, Rob did not do it any good, thinks TV connoisseur Rob Goossens of RTL Boulevard. “That exclusivity, you get a lot of money for that, but you do sign yourself away completely,” he says The BLVD Podcast.
What then? “The moment the channel says: ‘We are going to make this programme’, you don’t really have an excuse to say: ‘No, we are not going to do that for a while.’ And then you see that people suddenly turn into jacks of all trades. And with that, the status of a star can crumble enormously. That happened to Rob Kemps, for example.”
“That doesn’t fit!”
Such a raid on Ik Hou Van Holland suited Rob perfectly, but with De 10 Questions, in which he asked celebrities questions that were whispered to him by Antoinnette Scheulderman, he went wrong. “His management should actually say: ‘Okay, that doesn’t suit him, we’re not going to do that.'”
Without an exclusive TV contract, you have more control over your career, says Rob. “As long as you are not tied up exclusively, you can theoretically go to Videoland. But you can also sit at home on the couch with a bag of chips. If you think: well here comes John de Mol again with a bizarre program idea, let’s just walk it for a while.
craziness
Actually, not having an exclusive TV contract is a luxury position, says Rob. “That is also a luxury that I think is at least as important, especially for those stars who simply don’t know what to do with the money they have earned over the years because of the craziness.”