Angela de Jong will stop writing her TV column for the AD. From September, she will become a general columnist for the newspaper. “It was starting to feel a bit restrictive,” she says about her decision.
From September, De Jong will be able to write about much more than just television in her new role. “With yet another season of MAX vakantieman, B&B Vol liefde, or Boer zoekt Vrouw, I sometimes don’t know what to write about it anymore,” she tells the AD.
De Jong has worked for the newspaper since 2005 and has been writing columns about television programs since 2011. Initially, these pieces appeared weekly, but more than eight years ago, she started writing daily about the TV offerings.
In her columns, De Jong often expressed herself critically. “I also don’t think Rachel and André Hazes will mind, and Humberto Tan won’t like me so much anymore,” she says about some of the main characters from previous columns she wrote.
“The influence of TV is enormous: it determines how we look at the world around us. You must therefore follow that medium critically, just like football and politics,” De Jong said in an interview with the newspaper in 2021. She said she wanted to “throw a stone in the pond” with her columns, hoping that program makers would take the viewer seriously.
Appearing on TV and radio programs
In addition to writing columns, De Jong regularly appears on TV and radio programs to talk about the media. She is often a guest on talk shows such as Renze, Eva, and Goedemorgen Nederland, but also to be heard on Het Mediaforum on NPO Radio 1. “If they invite me, I will continue to do so,” she says.
In the summer of 2017, De Jong participated in De slimste mens. In the final, she won from presenter Mischa Blok. She became the second woman to win the popular NPO quiz.