RTL 4 has for the time being pulled the plug on the VriendenLoterij Miljonairs program, meaning Robert ten Brink is losing one of the few programs he still had. Why is that?
According to ratings authority Tina Nijkamp, it is logical that RTL 4 has stopped doing this. “This has to do with the fact that the program in HHV 25-54 years – that is the target group of RTL 4, household manager – no longer scored enough. Below 10 percent. Since 2024, those viewing figures have fallen sharply,” she says in Tina’s TV Update.
Too few viewers
It never exceeded the ten percent market share again, according to Tina. “And that is far too little for RTL 4, which normally averages around 17 percent during prime time. If it is significantly below that, it will cause damage, it will cost money and the advertising breaks will yield less.”
She continues: “RTL 4 did have the advantage that this program was actually – I’m almost certain – delivered for free or almost for free. It was completely sponsored by the Friends Lottery, but it is of no use to them if it does not score well enough. It is of course an expensive program to make, just in terms of prize money of course.”
Not sad
According to Tina, RTL 4 is ‘not sad’ that this will disappear from the air. “It had to go before. In 2011, Robert ten Brink was told: ‘It will stop.’ Then Jeroen van der Boom went to do it for another season at SBS 6, but that was not a success either. Then it was shelved until 2019 and then RTL 4 started it again.”
As a channel boss, Tina herself was not too keen on this quiz. “It always scored very old. I remember that Robert ten Brink then went to RTL 4 in 2006. At that time I was just a program director at SBS 6 and we were very disappointed that they had bought Robert.”
‘So old’
Tina was absolutely bummed about that. “We sat around the table and said to each other: ‘There is one advantage, because we no longer have that Weekend Millionaires.’ That was already so old that we were not sorry that we had lost it.”
She concludes: “It will be a hard blow for Robert ten Brink. It is his TV baby after all.”