Dutch Television: Between Community and Commodity

This chapter outlines what is generally seen as one of the most complex but also interesting broadcasting systems in the world. It analyzes how the electronic media first served as in instrument to segregate the main social groups in Dutch society, mainly during the radio period, but subsequently trespassed and helped to overturn the traditional social structure of “pillarization,” especially in the television period. Pillarization will be considered as part of a more general process of modernization or, more precisely, controlled modernization. Despite commercial initiatives throughout the history of the broadcast media, it took 60 years to break the public hegemony and to introduce commercial broadcasting in the Netherlands. It was, in fact, European regulation that forced the Dutch government to tolerate commercial television. Nevertheless, after 15 years of “dualbroadcasting,” television has become a successful trade and the Netherlands now has one of the most competitive, although not profitable, television markets in Europe.