Mass media in the Netherlands

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Mass media in the Netherlands covers television, radio, newspapers and magazines. It has two main features: pillarisation, a historic division of society into religious and social groups with their own media, and a growing amount of commercial media.

Public broadcasting is run by several associations with many members. They share three national TV channels (NPO 1, 2, 3) and seven radio stations (NPO Radio 1, 2, 3FM, 4, 5, 6 and FunX). Air time is distributed roughly in proportion to each association’s size. The system also includes government-funded broadcasting foundations and provincial channels.

Commercial broadcasting was banned until 1988. In the 1970s, Veronica and TROS broadcast from offshore pirate stations, and RTL Group started broadcasting from Luxembourg in the 1980s. Today there are seven large channels owned by RTL and SBS and other partners: RTL 4, 5, 7, 8 and RTL Z; SBS6, SBS9, Net5 and Veronica. Other networks include Discovery Benelux, Viacom, Fox, Disney-ABC and Time Warner.

Newspapers are privately owned. The pillarisation links have mostly disappeared. Two big players dominate: Medialaan - De Persgroep Publishing (owning several newspapers) and Telegraaf Media Groep (owning De Telegraaf and Sp!ts). The main papers are De Telegraaf (right-wing tabloid), NRC Handelsblad (liberal), Trouw (Protestant) and De Volkskrant (left-leaning). Algemeen Dagblad merged with local papers to form a national-local paper, and Het Financieele Dagblad serves the business community. Free newspapers such as Spits and Metro are popular, alongside many local and regional papers.

Most broadcasting and newspaper groups have online presence, and some publish exclusively online, such as NU.nl, Tweakers, Dumpert and GeenStijl.

Magazines were also tied to pillarisation in the past. The main news magazines are Vrij Nederland (left) and De Groene Amsterdammer (left), and Elsevier and HP/De Tijd (right). In the 1970s, many Dutch magazines owned by Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen were sold to Sanoma. Other well-known magazines include Margriet, Libelle and Nieuwe Revu, and the Dutch editions of Donald Duck and Playboy.