The viewing figures of The Staatsloterij Show with Hélène Hendriks are on the rise, but Aran Bade thinks it is a missed opportunity that she does not get off the show stairs. “That makes perfect sense!”, he says.
The viewing figures of Hélène Hendriks and her Staatsloterij Show are going well. While 594 thousand people watched the premiere episode last Saturday, 643 thousand people attended last night. And that is a striking shift; the vast majority of programs lose viewers after the first episode.
Show trap
Hélène easily managed to beat the RTL 4 show The House of Hide and Seek. 363 thousand people watched that. Only the final of the Eurovision Song Contest did better with 798 thousand viewers on NPO 1. “In the messenger target group, RTL 4 still beats SBS 6. 2.8 percent vs. 2.0 percent audience density,” said TV authority Tina Nijkamp.
Hélène’s show is not yet a big hit and according to show expert Aran Bade of RTL Boulevard, this is partly because viewers have different expectations of a large-scale show like The Staatsloterij Show. “You know how expensive it is to make this these days. Then let her get off that show trap!”, he shouted this week.
Interesting
The glittery side of TV critic Victor Vlam would love that too. “Yes, I find it very interesting criticism, because I think to myself: I agree with this one hundred percent as a human being. I really think: great. I also have a certain nostalgia for those old show stages and those big shows of the nineties. Great.”
He continues in the podcast Victor Indicates TV: “I just think that if I were the creator of this program and if I were in John de Mol’s shoes for a moment, I would also do it his way. I think that if it is too much like it used to be, it no longer works these days.”
Grand opening
A grand opening will no longer work in 2026, Victor thinks. “Yes, specifically that grand opening was no longer there at all. Hélène just stood in the middle of the studio and welcomed people. That was it. There used to be a large safe, which opened and Marc Klein Essink walked out with a number of suitcases with money that he held up.”
There were also guards walking around him at the time, he continues. “It was big and it lasted more than a minute. That has all been scrapped and now Hélène just says hello.”
Zap moment
It shows that the style preferences of the viewer have changed, but especially the influence of short films on the internet, according to Victor. “Television has also changed that, because we simply have much less patience as viewers. We are used to internet video where we are immediately gratified and immediately see what we want to see.”
He concludes: “We have no patience for a long introduction, for example. It used to take a minute and we now find that too long. A minute is no longer feasible at all. That would cause a zapping moment.”
