It’s unbelievable: election day has arrived and no one talked about Arjen Lubach during the last campaign. Does he still broadcast at all? “Its relevance has diminished.”
Arjen Lubach has lost a huge amount of impact by moving from the country’s most watched TV channel NPO 1 to the commercial RTL 4, where he now forms a tandem with the failed RTL Tonight. Even during the last election campaign – today the Netherlands goes to the polls – we hardly heard about him.
Relevance dropped
TV critic Victor Vlam finds this very striking. “You would think: for a satirist that is an ideal moment, because there is a lot of fodder for your daily show, and yet it is not the case that Arjen Lubach really knows how to go viral as happened in the past,” he says in the podcast Victor Indicates TV.
“What he doesn’t have in these elections, and he did have that in the past, is a moment that everyone in the Netherlands was talking about. Arjen’s cultural relevance has diminished slightly.”
‘It’s missing now’
During the 2017 elections, Arjen launched the much-discussed Kamergotchi and in 2021 he had a hit with the song ‘Go niet naar Nieuwsuur’. “That was also something funny and nice that was going around at that time and was much discussed. That is missing this time.”
Arjen currently comments on political news every day. “If you like it, it’s quite a witty comment, but to say that he’s turning the whole world upside down? No, absolutely not.”
Hype diminished
All those items from Arjen don’t make any difference. “It remains very limited to its programs and the viewers who are there for it and it is not discussed very much outside of it. What that says is that I think you can conclude that creativity has decreased.”
“The hype has subsided somewhat, I think the appreciation is also somewhat less, there is a kind of permanent audience that quite likes it, but what strikes me most is that he has not been able to leave his mark on it in these elections. I think it is a shame and a disappointment in a way. I had hoped for more.”