After three dramatically poorly viewed episodes, RTL 7 does not yet choose to take the renewed football talk show VTBL off the tube. “Does it have to grow? Yes yes!”, screams Angela de Jong.
After a failed attempt in 2019 with Humberto Tan as presenter, RTL 7 is now trying again with the football talk show VTBL. However, after three episodes, the program, which is now alternately presented by Frank Evenblij and Simon Zijlemans, seems doomed. Because no dog is watching.
VTBL of the tube?
VTBL will face the brand new competitor Veronica Offside with Wilfred Genee for the first time this week. After last week’s 126 and 86 thousand viewers – VTBL started a week earlier – only 72 thousand people watched the program yesterday. Veronica Offside recorded 283 thousand viewers at the same time.
Viewing figures expert Tina Nijkamp lives on her Instagram channel agrees with the makers of VTBL: “Wilfred also scores resounding figures in the commercial target group: 8.9 percent market share, while VTBL only scores 2.3 percent. An emergency meeting will certainly take place today at RTL whether they should not immediately take the program off the tube.”
RTL 7 does not bend
Tina thinks an early TV exit from VTBL ‘would be the most sensible’. “Because these are very sad numbers,” she says. Still, the channel doesn’t seem to want to believe that.
RTL 7 is keeping VTBL on the tube for the time being. According to the broadcaster, the program must be given time and still to be found. “We don’t play panic football.”
Angela laughs about it
Angela de Jong always finds this a laughable excuse. “In the coming days, the broadcasters involved will shout the loudest ‘that it still has to grow’. Yes yes”, she screams into her AD column. “I only have one question that TV owners today should try to answer in all honesty in their emergency evaluations.”
And that is the question why the viewer would sit down and watch a ‘wannabe Genee, Gijp or Derksen at 8.30 pm if you can get the original an hour later’. “VTBL is three episodes on its way and is falling towards the dreaded zero in record time.”
What does Rob say?
Joost Maiburg, reporter for RTL Boulevard, thinks that VTBL ‘will continue for a while’. “RTL 7 also wants a platform with those football rights to be able to talk about football somewhere. A ‘football station’ without a business card in the form of a football talk show is of course impossible”, he tweeted.
His Boulevard colleague Rob Goossens doubts that. “If they had done a little better, you could have continued until the merger of Talpa and RTL and then removed VTBL from the channel because of ‘doubling’. But do you let the program float around on open water with these numbers for so long… I don’t know.”