At ‘Show news’ you could see how powerful the De Mol family is

Will you finally watch a piece on your free Friday evening The Voice of Holland, it appears for the time being the last episode to have been. I was amazed at a new element in the talent show, the so-called block button. By pressing it, one of the coaches could ‘block’ another coach when a candidate appeared; the singer could then no longer choose the checkered coach as accompanist. Exciting for the viewer, but a shame for the tense candidate who dreams of being guided by, say, Anouk, but sees his glasses smashed by the assertiveness of, say, Waylon.

Saturday morning there appeared to be more block buttons in the country of The Voice of Holland. RTL also had one: the broadcasts were suspended due to allegations of abuse of power and sexually transgressive behavior about which the BNNVARA program BOOS had requested a rebuttal. Back then blocked band leader Jeroen Rietbergen, also Linda de Mol’s husband and thus John de Mol’s brother-in-law: he acknowledged misconduct and resigned. After that, it turned out that a report had been made against coach Ali B.

Also read: What went wrong with The Voice?

On Sunday, two sponsors pressed their block button, after which Anouk gave a monumental ram to hers. The singer wanted nothing more to do with the “pleurisy”: “It’s just a corrupt gang. I don’t want to work in a place where for years a number of men have abused their position and where they have deliberately chosen to keep it quiet and look the other way.”

We haven’t seen an explosion this close to the heart of polder show business since, er, last month a complaint was filed for sexual abuse against singer Marco Borsato. Then it had gossip show Show news (SBS6) regretted a broadcast that would not have been out of place at the Victim Blaming Open Goois Championship.

It wasn’t that bad this time. It was neatly reported about Ronald Molendijk that he was a good friend of the resigned band leader, after which Molendijk said that Rietbergen was simply ‘a flirt’, but that he had told him that he had not broken the law. You can see how powerful the De Mol family is from the emphasis with which the words ‘appears’ and ‘supposed’ were pronounced at the Shownieuws table.

Most important news of the day

The victims of ‘the corrupt gang’ were briefly mentioned by criminal lawyer Natacha Harlequin (whose heart went out to Linda de Mol, she said), who gave a short lecture on the legal side of this not only legal case. Patty Brard openly questioned whether there was actually a power relationship between a bandleader and the candidate. The answer is yes, as was already clearly explained in the NOS News of Saturday, that the scandal at The Voice also found the most important news of the day.

The next evening switched RTL Boulevard on to the question of how the issue would be handled on Monday in the talk shows HLF8 of John’s son Johnny de Mol and VI Today – also broadcast on SBS6. Reporter Rob Goossens already recommended popcorn, but I can imagine that not all victims immediately run to the store.

Show news by Sunday had yet to come. In it, Albert Verlinde was adamant about what had been done to “the girls in the snake pit”. But then he stated that research should be done into all programs of SBS competitor RTL and made presenter Humberto Tan suspicious. To him, the editor-in-chief of Privé complained that there were “so few facts”, a circumstance that his magazine usually manages to cope with bravely. That was also apparent now, because despite the factual lack, he claimed that Ali B was “the worst”. It was time for the block button on the remote.

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