'Live from the Redroom, Winston is here,' Wendy says sultrily into the camera, and Winston enters the living room. As so often, he urges everyone to follow TVOH on Twitter and to send tweets containing #tvoh. Behind Winston, a screen is visible displaying the Twitter logo, and the tweets fly across the screen so fast that they are barely readable. I wonder what exactly the reason is for using Twitter so intensively in The Voice of Holland.
First, I wondered if it was about the ratings. After all, you can reach and activate a great many people via Twitter to attract even more TV viewers. TVOH has been a ratings powerhouse from the start, and the vast majority of the 600.000 active Twitter users in the Netherlands have likely been watching TVOH from the very beginning. The group that does not likely has a good reason for not watching TVOH. Therefore, the ratings can no longer rise simply because Twitter users who are not watching yet suddenly start watching TVOH. Consequently, the reason for the ratings is ruled out for me.
Another reason could be that John de Mol invested in Twitter and is keen to earn back his investment many times over. I think this is the case and that John is handling this very smartly and on a grand scale. Additionally, I think that John is not the only Dutch celebrity who has invested in Twitter, but that there is another famous John involved. It must have gone something like this.
John de Mol is eager to sell his TV format to the world and sees Twitter as a good tool to measure success and show it to the world immediately. After all, you can instantly see how many followers you have gained, and if you do very well, TVOH can become a trending topic. John has a lot of confidence in the TV format and is convinced that it will automatically attract high viewership. But he does not yet know how to make it a hit on Twitter. This is where the other John came into the picture. The other John suggested that he needed a contestant who was well-liked by the jury but not by the public, and that the public would make this known on Twitter of their own accord. In this way, there is a lot of talk about TVOH on Twitter.
John de Mol wondered who this role should go for, and the other John indicated that he knew just the person. According to him, his little sister could fill the role, and so it happened. John de Mol ensured that the program became hugely popular in the Netherlands, and John Ewbank, by suggesting his sister, ensured that TVOH became hugely popular on Twitter. And it worked; TVOH and Twitter are now inseparable, and the TV format has been sold to the US. John and John are earning back their investments many times over, and Jennifer is getting her one minute of fame.