Caroline de Bruijn reveals that RTL 4 was considering pulling the plug on Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden a few years ago. “Yes, there have been voices from RTL,” she says.
In its heyday, Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden was a mega hit on RTL 4 with more than two million linear viewers per evening, but that rapidly declined at a certain point. It is no longer that enormous success; Even including delayed viewing, the penultimate Thursday broadcast entertained ‘only’ 787 thousand viewers.
Unplug
Fortunately for the makers, GTST is now scoring well again in the commercial target group, but for a while everything was hanging by a thread, reveals actress Caroline de Bruijn in The Telegraph.
She says: “When the program was not doing well, RTL sometimes made noises that the plug might have to be pulled. But our entire production always had confidence that everything would turn out well and fortunately that happened.”
Three years
In fact, RTL has extended the GTST contract for three years. And Caroline only needs two more years before she reaches state pension age. Will it work?
Nothing is certain, says Caroline. “Because GTST has been around for so long, people may think that it will naturally always exist. It seems a lot like that now, but we do work for a commercial channel. So if the program were no longer profitable, it would die.”