March 11, 2012

Vote for the pretty girl behind the anchor

Filed under: Shows,Technology by Branko Collin @ 11:51 am

Three friends from the Eindhoven University of Technology run a website to crowd source the detection of pretty girls behind popular TV anchor Matthijs van Nieuwkerk.

The interface to hetmeisjeachtermatthijs.nl is very simple. It presents you with a screenshot of last night’s episode of talk show De Wereld Draait Door, covered in squares that any visitor can click on. Just click the square that covers the pretty girl, in your opinion, and your vote is recorded.

According to Bright, the site has been up for about 18 months, and drew 10,000 visitors last year.

“Part of the fun”, founder Teun Vinken told the tech site, “is that the girls are blurry. Half the time you cannot even be sure they are really that pretty.”

Screenshot: hetmeisjeachtermatthijs.nl.

Tags: , , ,

April 16, 2011

Slo-mo video of Paris-Roubaix bike race for Holland Sport TV

Filed under: Shows,Sports by Branko Collin @ 2:06 pm

A program like Holland Sport is something you’ll never see on commercial television channels, which is what makes it a pity the publicly funded programme will stop after 8 successful years. Holland Sport was a show that mixed interviews of athletes with silly game elements, in which members of the audience got to pit their skills against the show’s guests.

Although the interviews were not as deep as they could have been (the show was, after all, intended as light entertainment), they did provide an alternative view into the lives of top athletes.

As an example of the sort of things a programme like Holland Sports could afford to do, here is a video poem Rob Hodselmans made for the show last week, covering the cobblestone-filled Paris – Roubaix bicycle road race.

Between 2003 and 2008 the show was hosted by presenter Matthijs van Nieuwkerk and comedian Wilfried de Jong. When Van Nieuwkerk quit due to other obligations, De Jong carried on solo for a couple of years.

(Video: YouTube / Rob Hodselmans)

Tags: , , ,

March 8, 2011

A whole hour of airplay to band that breaks the minute

Filed under: Music,Shows by Branko Collin @ 10:10 am

The minute in which bands have to compress their latest hit if they want to appear on De Wereld Draait Door, the popular talk show hosted by Matthijs van Nieuwkerk, has long been a nuisance to 3FM radio DJ Michiel Veenstra. But now he has come up with a remedy: the first band that dares to play the full version of their song (regardless of whether it will be broadcast or not), will receive a full hour of airplay on his show.

Newspaper De Pers, which reported the action, has weighed in by promising a mention on their front page of the same band, and an interview in the paper to boot.

De Wereld Draait Door responded by saying they simply have to cut the songs short because every minute of music makes them lose 200,000 viewers, Veenstra reports on his blog.

De Wereld Draait Door, literally The World Turns, is a pun meaning both “there’s always a tomorrow” and “the world’s going nuts”. Veenstra is the DJ that decided to spin music at the North Pole back in 2007.

Illustration: De Wereld Draait Door logo.

Tags: , , , , , ,

September 5, 2008

Dutch journalist’s French music compilation gets sequel

Filed under: Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 9:27 am
Filles Fragiles 2

After finally convincing a Dutch record label to release his hand-picked French girls music compilation Filles Fragiles which did better than anybody expected, Dutch music journalist Guuz Hoogaerts aka Guuzbourg is currently working on volume 2 which will be out in October. To support the launch this time there will be shows in November at the Sugar Factory in Amsterdam and the Schouwburg in Leiden with top French acts Françoiz Breut, Vanessa Contenay-Quinones of Vanessa & the O’s and Paris’ Peppermoon. Peppermoon, featured on FF1, performed on the Dutch television programme ‘De Wereld Draait Door’ hosted by Matthijs van Nieuwkerk who was so impressed that he has now written the introduction to the liner notes of FF2. Hosting the evening will be famous Dutch writer Ronald Giphart who wrote the intro to the liner notes the first time around and whose neologism ‘zuchtmeisje’ (sighing female singer) made it into the Dutch dictionary.

Big orange disclaimer: I have been doing projects with Guuzbourg for close to four years now, we DJ together on occasion (shamless plug for our next appearance) and yeah, it’s French and very original.

Tags: , , , , , , ,