Rutger Castricum is no longer the brutal reporter he once was. In fact, he is nowadays, except for some excesses in Today Inside, quite mild. Why is that?
The really sharp edges are now gone at Rutger Castricum. Where ever he it infant terrible of Dutch television, he has now become salonfähig. At the moment he can be seen with a pretty bland interview program on NPO 1, namely Taxi Castricum. It’s a huge ratings flop.
Salt-free
Those low viewing figures do not surprise opinion maker Victor Vlam at all. “I was watching Rutger and I thought: yes, that used to be the cheeky reporter, but now it is the good family man with four children, extremely well-styled suits, expensive suits too, and had a hair transplant,” says him in the podcast The Communicados.
Rutger is now very predictable, says Victor. “It’s a bit salty. It is no longer the Rutger of the past, but that is because there is a strategy behind it, namely to get a talk show.”
Own talk show
As a brutal troublemaker you don’t get your own talk show at the NPO and that’s why Rutger is now so lenient, says Victor. “PowNed wants a talk show. In their 2022/2026 policy plan, they literally say: ‘We aspire to a horizontal slot on television where guests are given the floor who are usually not invited to the existing tables.’”
He continues: “As a full-fledged broadcaster, they naturally also have to fill a lot of airtime, so they also have to make other programmes. What I think they are doing is: they are trying to profile Rutger as someone who can carry the talk show on behalf of PowNed in the future.”
Smash television
The people at PowNed all have a mortgage to pay and therefore just want to continue to work happily at the NPO. And that required a transformation. “Rutger used to have a very strong profile, of course, but it was also a bit of bullshit television and the question is whether that is interesting enough for a full-fledged talk show.”
He concludes: “Perhaps it was also profiled too strongly and then did not attract enough of the broad segment of the Netherlands. So I think they’re trying to portray him as a slightly more reasonable person, someone who can carry a talk show. I think that is what PowNed’s strategy is.”