Page - 105 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Leen d’Haenens | Whither Cultural Diversity on the Dutch TV Screen? 105 2006) identifying all persons and characters visible on television and labelling them for various categories (gender, ethnicity, age group, and visible disability) as well as their function in the program (anchor, talk show host, leading character, etc.). Ethnicity was operationalized in terms of visibility (skin colour, hair, shape of the eyes, style of clothing, family name, and/or self- identification). Summarizing, the results revealed that the dominant group on Dutch television was white (70%), while 14 percent belonged to the group of ethnic others. At first sight, this result does not seem to be too bad, given the approximate 10 percent in demographics. Nevertheless, the 14 percent included “foreign” ethnic groups, the largest group being “African Americans”, mainly appeared in bought US productions aired on Dutch commercial channels, in (pop) concerts or athletic events, and were not particularly representative of the Dutch multicultural fabric. In comparison: Just 2.4 percent of the people shown on public television and 1.1 percent on commercial television were of Surinamese or Antillean origin. People from North African descent were represented with a mere 0.2 percent. 4.1 The Diversity Monitor 2005 The second Monitor of Diversity (by Koeman, Peeters & d’Haenens, 2007) is a follow-up of the first and equally evolves around the extent to which and the way in which social reality is being constructed through the Dutch public broadcaster compared to its commercial counterparts. The Diversity Monitor 2005 analysed a total of nine Dutch television channels, among which were three public channels (Nederland 1, 2 and 3) and six commercial channels (RTL4, RTL5, Yorin, SBS6, Net5 and Veronica). These were all the Dutch general interest channels at the time which together reached a market share of 89%. A constructed week has been examined: the seven days were spread over the period from Monday, February 28, up to and including Tuesday, April 5, 2005. This was done in order to reduce the risk of current events influencing the data. Only prime-time programs were included in the sample, which consisted of 104 hours of public-service programs and 124 hours of commercial program output3. The number of programs analysed amounted to 481 (i.e., 250 of the public channels and 231 of the commercial channels). These programs were predominantly non-fiction (71%). The commercial channels offer, relatively speaking, more fiction, especially because of the input of RTL5 and Net 5. 3 These are net figures, i.e. exclusive of commercials, program announcements and parts of programs already begun.