[BLOG] Hey Kicken, what’s that? Has the great 538 bashing started, right around the time that 538 is exactly 30 years old? First Niek van der Bruggen has to sing three tones lower and now you have aimed your arrows at Wietze de Jager? Well they do it themselves, by doing things on-air that would even get you rapped on the fingers of the local broadcaster. Now it is Wietze de Jager, morning man at 538, who will tell his listeners in an 8-minute talk (!) that the morning show is very tough and he would rather work four days instead of five. What a poverty.
The audio fragment is now massively shared among jocks on whatsapp, the lament of brand new morning jock Wietze de Jager against his sidekicks, live on-air, during the 538 Top 1000. No less than eight minutes long. Here you lose your courage, bring something like ‘entertainment’ in a morning show. Sure you can (and should) be personal, but that doesn’t mean you should just sit around and evaluate with your colleagues on a national station, for the hard-fought attention of the listener in the morning. Listen and shudder for yourself:
‘Again another song that makes you think ooh how nice isn’t it’. And then pretend you’re going to bring world news. ‘Paternity leave’. *starts music*, then newsreader Mart reveals the punch line of the story, Wietze doesn’t react, pretends his nose is bleeding and then goes on to say that he finds it all difficult, combining a morning show with a family with three young children. Not a nice father anymore. And so wants to work four instead of five days. Because he wants to take his children to school one day a week. After 9 months of morning show, Wietze de Jager is already half giving up, on-air. Compliments. 538 will win the match with you!
I understand his intention, nice talking about your kids on-air to relate with other parents, but with this you completely miss the point. If you already do this, you prepare this well, you agree with your co-hosts which way the story will go. No, nice and unprepared to sit around and tell them that you misunderstood how heavy a morning show is. With Sensation White in the background. What shabby content the Dutch radio listener is treated to.
I may be exaggerating it all, but haven’t I already written it down a hundred times here: a morning or afternoon show can NOT be combined with raising young children. You could have come up with that yourself in advance, as Klaas van der Eerden rightly points out three times in this talk. Your station manager Coco could have already figured this out. And if you’re going to discuss this on-air for 8 minutes during a hit list, you’re just an amateur. This has nothing to do with entertainment, this is not cool, this is just first class tinkering. And worst of all, your listener just thinks ‘hey asshole, I have to work 8 hours a day five days a week, poser!’ If you are Edwin Evers who has built up a lot of credits with his listeners for a long time, then you might still get away with such an insider story, but you just came to see 538 that morning. Your mission is now all on everything put to win souls, not to sit and act pathetic!
And then they will come back to it a day later by getting listeners into the broadcast. To speak with Domien: man, man, man. Wietze, you have disqualified yourself as a morning deejay for me on this one. Then just stop doing it completely, go back to doing something on the weekend and Friday evening and leave the morning to someone who is 200% motivated for it. That is also the only way to win the competition, as I wrote so often, you don’t just add a morning show. I can hope that Dave Minneboo will have a word with his morning man: either you put everything aside to make this work, or it was a short adventure for you. This is exactly the same arrogance that your predecessor Frank Dane displayed in the morning and now you’re going to do it all over again?
Patrick Kicken
Fortunately, on the floors above the Radio 538 studio, people still think about what is fun for the listener. Otherwise, check out these two video fragments of your Talpa colleagues who are now going viral Wietze. Or ask your companion and comedian Klaas van de Eerden for some advice on storytelling, he will never go unprepared on stage and just gossip without a punch.
Otherwise just move the Veronica morning show to 538, problem solved. Tim Klijn seems motivated! Old 538 jock, can go back again, together with the sidekicks of Evers: