Should public service broadcasters, funded at least partially from the taxpayer’s purse, be allowed to pack their television schedules with “reality” game shows, soaps and quizzes, to the extent that they are virtually indistinguishable from their commercial rivals?
That was the question posed last year by the cash-strapped arts council of the Netherlands – the country which, for better or worse, is the spiritual home of the Big Brother franchise, created in 1999 by media tycoon John de Mol, and his almost-eponymous production company, Endemol.
In a diverse country of 16 million people, with three public service channels shared by 21 public service broadcast companies, all competing with three commercial broadcasters who between them operate seven more channels, the Dutch TV market is complex and truly cut-throat.
As a result, settling down to watch your favourite soap of an evening can be a pretty unattractive consumer experience.
Programmes crash without a second’s notice into ad breaks with a much higher volume so as not to give the viewer a chance to reach for the remote control. That, apparently, gives advertisers vital seconds to smash through our reinforced indifference barriers and deliver their message.
Pavlov’s dogs
Of course, if your do manage to mute the sound, the programmes crash back again in the blink of an eye – so you’re liable to have missed some essential development in your favourite medical soap unless you swallow your drama, adverts and all. Think Pavlov’s dogs.
The best-selling historian Geert Mak memorably described Dutch public service broadcasting to a gathering of thunder-struck media grandees some months ago as "a diet of ratings-chasing pink slush" that was "nothing less than insulting".
It’s the sort of television that makes you feel the broadcaster is trying to outwit you rather than to seduce you with creativity and high production values. And you’re probably right: in the battle for ratings and advertising revenue, the days of subtlety are long gone.
More to the point, it’s the sort of TV that makes one smile fondly at the wisdom of the “younger demographic”, who absorb news where they find it, stream movies from the web while engrossed in social media – and who don’t really get the question, “which channel do you usually watch?”
In other words, the very demographic who are – “inexplicably” – abandoning traditional television channels in droves. To that extent, the arts council – smarting from budget cuts for everything from orchestras to museums and wondering why popular programming should be featherbedded – made two eminently sensible recommendations about the future of Dutch TV.
The first was that the NPO, the Dutch public broadcasting authority, should be “reformed” so that it becomes less of an administrative HQ and more what it should originally have been, “a media organisation with a creative heart”.
Commercial competitors
The second suggestion was that public service broadcasters should be forced to do more to differentiate themselves from their commercial competitors and to justify their state funding.
The priorities should be: news, documentaries, culture, education, children’s programming, and Dutch-language series – the latter home-produced, as distinct from bought in from America and subtitled or voiced over.
Worthy reports have a way of gathering dust, so there was surprise – and not a little indignation in Hilversum, home of Dutch broadcasting – last week, when the Rutte government announced draft legislation that will end public funding for ratings-busting shows that can easily pay for themselves.
A good example is The Farmer Wants a Wife, one of the most popular shows in the Netherlands – which is produced by a public service broadcaster.
Culture minister Sander Dekker has also agreed to reform the NPO, as the arts council suggested – and warns that programme producers who cannot manage to be creative within the parameters of public service broadcasting "should be given less airtime".
Funding cut
Most dramatically for the industry itself, the 21 public service broadcast companies are being told to reduce their number to eight and in the medium term to no more than six – and that state funding will be cut by €200 million from the end of this year.
“There needs to be more drive and more creativity,” says Dekker. “At the moment, there are meetings about everything, but no change. Without change, public service broadcasters will miss the boat – and a new generation will switch off, for good.”
Dekker is right. It’s unpalatable medicine but in the end it may help the industry to survive. In terms of choice, it will certainly be better for the viewers.