Johan Derksen thinks that RTL 7 will hopelessly lose the football battle with Veronica. He thinks you won’t win the war with a presenter like Simon Zijlemans.
In the new season, men’s channels RTL 7 and Veronica will both program a football talk show on Monday and Friday evenings at 8.30 pm. It is remarkable that RTL and Talpa behave like ruffs in the old-fashioned way, because Talpa is anxiously waiting for permission to be taken over by RTL.
Veronica Offside vs VTBL
Wilfred Genee will host the talk show on Veronica. The analysts contracted for Veronica Offside, as the show will be called, are Andy van der Meijde, Wim Kieft and Wesley Sneijder. At RTL 7’s VTBL, two presenters have been chosen who will alternate: Simon Zijlemans and Frank Evenblij.
Where Veronica Offside will be more pub talk, VTBL wants to sit between Studio Voetbal and the VI talk. Theo Janssen, Jan Boskamp, Hedwiges Maduro, Anouk Hoogendijk, Aad de Mos and Ron Vlaar were hired as rotating analysts for that programme.
What does John say?
Johan Derksen thinks that RTL has no chance. “RTL has one drawback: they don’t have a good presenter for football programs. That’s all very formal or someone acting a presenter. That will never work out. Then you have to have a very good presenter and then you’re in the right place with Wilfred.” he says.
He thinks it is excellent that Veronica has chosen Wilfred, despite the fact that he can also be seen daily on SBS 6 with Today Inside. “I applaud that, because there is no better man for such a program.”
double
Aren’t Veronica Offside and Today Inside going to double down a bit? “It won’t double at all. We are a very different program. We are an opinion show, also about football. They will talk about football much more timely than we do.”
What does he think of the analysts Andy, Wesley and Wim? “They are three boys with a football past and I think that is not unimportant in a football program.”
Logically
It is smart that Veronica is going to fill up the old VI slot again, Johan concludes. “I think it’s very logical. Look, I think Talpa thought strategically. He thought: if those three fail as a daily talk show, then there must be a return to that time slot where they can just start making Voetbal Inside again.”
“Now that we have passed our ‘daily talk show’ exam, they are filling in that gap and I think that is very logical in terms of competition, because otherwise other channels will sit on that time slot with such a program. Yes, I was not surprised.”