Game show Lingo goes the way of the dodo

After celebrating 25 years of entertaining the Netherlands with five-letter, six-letter and seven-letter word games, Dutch television staple Lingo will be pulled off the air at the end of September.

“According to broadcaster Nos, Lingo’s supporters include Ed Nijpels, a former VVD MP, and the chairman of AvroTros, who is planning to ask the programme director to reconsider.” Media Director Remco van Leen is considering moving the show from Ned 2 to Ned 1 in the 17:30 slot, but this would probably not increase the amount of viewers.

Many immigrants and expats have learnt some Dutch by watching Lingo and even by playing the CD-ROM video game that must be floating around the Internet somewhere. A last ditch attempt at getting more viewers in 2013 including inviting nudists to audition and doing a naked version of it. And then they’re always the Lingo moment that went viral with an unexpected dirty word on prime time television. Notice how calm the Dutch react to this contrary to other cultures that would surely panic.

(Links: www.dutchnews.nl, www.tros.nl, Photo: screenshot of Lingo by Tros.nl)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2014 at 2:25 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Lingo, television