Page - 101 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Leen d’Haenens | Whither Cultural Diversity on the Dutch TV Screen? 101 “modernist” influences (i.e., the existing liberal-bourgeois elite and the emerging socialist Labour movement). Although unique, the Dutch system fits well into Hallin & Mancini’s (2004) North/Central European or Democratic Corporatist Model in which consensus-seeking by coalition governments usually led to tolerant and moderate pluralism (Bardoel, 2006). Hence, originally this system, built around the notion of external pluralism, was not designed to confront citizens with diverging viewpoints at all, but on the contrary aimed at uniformity, at providing religious and ideological fractions in society with their own truth and their own window to the world in a structure of social segregation or social “apartheid” (Bardoel, 2006). Over the years the Dutch public service expanded to eight full-license broadcasting companies: five classical networks (representing the Calvinists, the Catholics, the liberal-conservatives, and the liberal-protestants) dating back from the 1920s, while a broadcasting company aimed at a general audience, one evangelical, and one addressing youths became part of the system in 1966, 1971 and 1998 respectively. Netherlands Public Broadcasting (Publieke Omroep, NPB) is the new name for the former NOS that serves as the overarching umbrella organization for the national public broadcasting service: its main tasks are to coordinate and direct programming. Nowadays broadcasting time on Dutch public radio and television is shared by 23 private organizations, big broadcasting associations and small licensed broadcasters, that have obtained a broadcasting license because they (re)present a certain religious, social or spiritual fraction in society or have a specific programming task (i.e. NOS, NPS and the educational broadcasters). Membership numbers as a criterion for the division of broadcast time and money were first introduced in the 1967 Broadcasting Act: a minimum of 150,000 paying members were required for obtaining a full license, with a program guide as the binding agent between the organizations and the members. These guides became instruments in a commercial struggle between the different broadcasting organizations. The former social and ideological ties were thus de facto transformed into a mainly consumer-oriented relationship (Van der Haak & Van Snippenburg, 2001). The Media Act (1988) and the Concession Act (2000) explicitly state that public broadcasting organizations themselves determine the form and content of their programs. Nevertheless, standards are set by imposing the production of a full range of programs comprising information, education, art, culture, and entertainment. For television, minimum percentages for these program categories are also stipulated: information and education (min. 35%); arts (min. 12.5%); culture, including arts (min. 25%); entertainment (max. 25%); European productions (min. 51%); Dutch or Frisian (50%); independent producers (25%); subtitling or hearing impaired (50%). That the public service continues to be an open