Journalist and TV editor-in-chief Hummie van der Tonnekreek died last week at the age of 76 from the effects of lung cancer. Television producer Gijs van Dam has announced this on behalf of the family. Van der Tonnekreek headed all editions of television program Big Brother.
She started as an editor at the weekly Margriet and later worked at the gossip magazines Story and Privé. She was also editor-in-chief of Weekend. She became known to the general public when she became editor-in-chief of Big Brotherthe program in which participants in a locked house were monitored for 24 hours with cameras.
Van der Tonnekreek helped shape the program and was involved in all editions of the original series. Her involvement in the show earned her the moniker ‘primordial mother’ of Big Brother on. She was also editor-in-chief of the reality program for some time Your wife, my wife.
In recent years, Van der Tonnekreek has been critical of the relaunch of Big Brother. In De Telegraaf she said that “the soul of the project” was missing. “What we did was rock solid. Today’s makers just made it bad.”