The district court in Amsterdam has ruled that the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Marja van Bijsterveldt, failed to investigate thoroughly the market effects of four new digital public broadcasting services that she recently approved. The court therefore upheld the objections of the trade associations of newspaper publishers (NDP), commercial broadcasters (VESTRA) and commercial radio (VCR).
The NDP, VESTRA and VCR objected to the decision of the minister to allow the public broadcasters to provide various new interactive TV services, content on mobile platforms and twelve themed radio channels. According to the objectors, the minister’s approval was in breach of an order of 26 January, 2010 by the European Commission. This obliges the minister to take into account the interests of the commercial media before approving new public broadcasting services.
The NDP, VESTRA and VCR have welcomed the court order. They say that commercial media have been subjected to increasingly more competition from public broadcasters, which they say inhibits new initiatives in the market.
on Dec 28th, 2010 at 08:29
It is a rather illogical stance taken by the NDP, VESTRA and VCR. Increased competition from public broadcasters would/should stimulate not inhibit new initiatives in the market, because they ought to come up with initiatives to beat off increased PSB competition.
on Dec 28th, 2010 at 12:16
I will be very curious how much innovation the commercial broadcasters (both radio and TV) will do by themselves. Innovations and tests cost money without any sign of a return on investment, and some fail. For example theme channel distribution via multicast on the Internet has been tested and has been shown to be a failure. But publiekeomroep still ran the test for a few years.
This objection and court decision sounds a lot like the commercial interests trying to save the shareholder value now and not thinking about where broadcasting will go in a number of years.
on Dec 28th, 2010 at 17:18
As for radio the share holders value already is negative, all commercial broadcasters, except Radio 538 and 100%NL only just recently, are losing money.
For Radio, the Public system wants 12 extra radio channels, not onbly on cable, as now questioned by the court decision, but also on DAB+. And here it is the commercial broadcasters who are forced to invest in DAB+ to have their licenses renewed. The NOS public radio will benefit from this by carrying 12 extra + 6 present staions is 18, exactly one Multiplex on DAB, and by offering every music format you can think of and wipe out commercial radio broadcasting.
In 1965 Hilversum 3 was intruduced as a light music channel, only to wipe out, or rather sink, Veronica. Le Histoire se Repete.