The viewers of the RTL Breakfast news are this morning updated for the last time by the friendly bass voice of Jan de Hoop. The presenter says goodbye to television journalism after 33 years. Emotionally, 67-year-old De Hoop spoke his last words as a news reader on Thursday, thanking his husband Coen and former RTL editor-in-chief Harm Taselaar for their support.
His colleagues and viewers could also count on warm words from De Hoop, who, as is often the case, had matched the color of his coffee mug to his sweater. With a lump in his throat, he said that he had received “thousands of sweet messages,” “I am very grateful to you for that.” He then put a hand to his mouth, only to self-deprecate that his farewell was “even worse” than that of saying goodbye. Studio Sports-presenter Toine van Peperstraten, who also did not keep it dry years ago.
The portrait photos displayed in the background illustrated the outward changes that De Hoop had undergone in the morning news for more than thirty years: the brown curly haircut with mustache changed over the years to a more formal appearance with glasses and a suit. Yet between the violent news events at De Hoop there was often room for a wink or a joke. In this way he also regularly managed to mask his sometimes difficult relationship with technology.
Technical malheur
RTL published a video on Thursday with moments when things went wrong between the technology and De Hoop. Years ago, for example, his colleagues had placed an iPad under his desk that chanted his name. “There’s a machine on the run, you must excuse me.” Struggling to suppress his laughter, he set the iPad aside. Then he stoically read the weather forecasts.
De Hoop often had to improvise if the autocue showed incorrect information or the images did not correspond to the spoken text. “It’s still early, just think,” he put into perspective a wrongly started video† Not infrequently, a burst of laughter followed. He also regularly held work meetings in front of thousands of viewers. „Perhaps the director can tell me – it has become a classic sentence by now – what are we going to do next? The conditions at the moment are indescribable.”
For more than thirty years he was the regular face behind the RTL desk at the breakfast news. He described getting up early as “a drama”, but he has in their own words never overslept. After his last news broadcast he got a royal award of the mayor of Apeldoorn. Although De Hoop has been able to verbally rescue itself from many challenging situations for years, it was not possible to pin the ribbon on. “I have no words for this.”
RTL already published a compilation in 2014 with nice moments by Jan de Hoop:
#Striking #news #reader #Jan #Hoop #stops #RTL #morning #news #years