Experts to Dutch Public Broadcasters: No Singing and No Dancing

Michael Hedges February 7, 2005

Governments must look for efficiency in their public media policies, says a Dutch think tank. Entertainment is out.

In all things, it’s the biggest stick in the valley that gets the most attention. So while public broadcasting supporters watch and listen attentively to the grinding and flapping at the BBC for prophesy of doom, the Dutch are vigorously beating up their public broadcasting system.

The latest shot is from the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy think tank (WRR). Released last Thursday (February 2) but leaked, mostly, over the past three weeks, the report attempts to move the national media regulation debate into new territory. “The public service broadcaster could have a more limited mandate,” concluded the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), the reports sponsor. Media watchers in the Netherlands and PSB watchers elsewhere seized the more specific point: governments have no business in the entertainment business.

Economists are experts at efficiency and this report begins with the revelation that media content is the issue, platforms and distribution being irrelevant. Media content markets can be separated, they surmise, into news and opinion, entertainment, arts and culture and specific information. A government’s media policy objectives are met differently for each.

The report goes on to analyze the dominant media platforms in terms of governmental policy objectives. No policy shift was recommended for the print media. And for the Internet, government “interference is virtually impossible.” For public radio and television, the analysts offered “options.”

“Public service broadcasting should focus on news and opinion (and possibly the dispersion of art and culture).  There would be limited space for entertainment, only if that accommodates reaching the government goals.”

Public broadcasting in the Netherlands is distinctive, with the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation (NOS) coordinating the output of several associations, each with civil, political or religious affiliation. This system of civil participation in Dutch public broadcasting has offered a “third way,” not state control and not free market. Advertising is sold collectively through the Dutch Radio and Television Advertising Association (STER). Aside from subsidies to “ailing” newspapers through the Press Fund and allocating frequencies to broadcasters, media policy in the Netherlands revolves around public broadcasting funding and distribution.

After a major overhaul, the Dutch abolished a license fee in 2000 and now support public broadcasting through public budgets plus ad sales. The Dutch Ministry of Culture commissioned McKinsey and Company, conclusions released in 2003, to devine a system for public broadcasting merging cost-efficiency with quality control. Budget cuts started with a trim in the nearly €900m 2003 budget by €40m in 2004, to be followed by annual cuts through 2007.

John Calvin (1509-1564) outlawed theater, banned dancing and singing

All governments view all money raised through taxation as theirs. Some are spendthrifts and some are not. Try as they might, public broadcasters have not been able to disguise mandatory television and radio license fees as anything other than taxes. Any move away from the license fee is viewed with reasonable suspicion by PSBs who, awhile acknowledging the difficulties, see it as a pragmatic choice. Public broadcasters following the establish public service order have been relatively successful molding rules that imply a firewall between funding and operations. But, as any Internet service provider knows, firewalls are an illusion.

This media policy report arrives at a conclusion established even long before this debate started. As all media distribution becomes commodity, equal and devalued, content is everything. News and information, arts and culture are virtuous content. Entertainment must not be. John Calvin is smiling in his grave.