RNW’s Rob Kievit writes: Listeners to Dutch classical music station Radio 4 are angry about planned format changes. In an attempt to increase listening rates, a popular morning music show on Radio 4 will be scrapped in February 2010 in favour of a news magazine. Critic Bas van Putten fulminated in NRC daily that the new programme “will be light stuff, with newspaper reviews and a low-threshold approach. A haphazardly formatted mix of chat, quotes and bits of music”.
According to the critic, the “knowledgeable and eloquent” host of Viertakt Vroeg magazine, RNW presenter Hans Haffmans (pictured right), has been declared “elitist” by the “anti-elite yobbos” of the public broadcaster. Station co-ordinator Marwil Straat defended her plans for the publicly funded station in a newspaper interview, saying that its 700,000 classical music listeners are getting older and older, and younger listeners need to be drawn to the station to keep it viable. “Highly educated older people are overrepresented in Radio 4’s audience,” she said in the interview. The average listener age is 65. As a result, Haffmans’ morning drive-time music programme and others have to go. On the Radio 4 listeners forum, contributors are demanding publication of the research results on which Ms Straat’s policy decisions are based.
Critic Bas van Putten points out that elderly intellectuals are a target audience, too. “Radio 4 is for well-educated, native Dutch music lovers. Public broadcasters need to cater for them as well as for teenagers and immigrants”. He is accusing the radio policy makers of populism.
Apart from public Radio 4, there is one other classical music station in the Netherlands. Commercial broadcaster Classic FM, however, lost its national FM license in the most recent frequency auction, and can only be heard on cable. Unlike Radio 4, Classic FM rarely broadcasts entire concerts, complete symphonies or works by little-known composers.
on Nov 24th, 2009 at 19:43
This looks like a complete mix-up between the responsibilities of publicly funded stations (R4 and R6) and the independent sector. Personally, whenever I wish to listen to ‘classical’ music fom an nl source, there is only one place to go, and that is concertzender.nl. There is a similar situation in the UK, but with ‘popular’ music rather than classical: I am utterly mystified why the BBC spends taxpayers’ money broadcasting ‘rock’ music (Radio 6) and ‘black’ music (Radio 1 Xtra) on DAB, when these are the most (over-)represented genres in broadcasting.
Andy, can you explain the current situation about concertzender please?
on Nov 24th, 2009 at 20:01
Concertzender has been saved by Amsterdam local broadcaster SALTO. It looks like we will be able to continue to enjoy its output via the internet.
I have to say I agree with Robert from Kent. The populist approach of the Dutch public broadcasters is getting worse all the time. Special interest programs are moved to late evenings or new stations and the audience figures are more important than ever.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 09:24
The situation re the Concertzender is explained in English on this page:
http://www.concertzender.nl/index.php?id=642
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 13:33
You’ve got the Dutch version of the news page there, Andy. The English one is :
http://www.concertzender.nl/index.php?id=642&language=en
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 13:42
Actually I pasted in the URL that was displaying in my browser as I was looking at the English page. There is a scripting error on the page which you will see if you click back and forth between English and Dutch. But the URL you give will indeed take you straight to the English page. Thanks.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 15:29
It is not only Classical Music station Radio 4 that is dicriminating older audiences, also high rated Radio 2 (Oldies, MOR) wants to “get rid” of it’s tradional Older listeners group.
As it seems the national pubcasters core businees is to fight the commercial stations, they have a more younger audience since advertisers care more for this younger age group.
The net result is that all broadcasters, public and commercial, are more and more neglecting the 50 + age group.
Just bad luck for them or irresponsible behaviour of te pubcasters? And my feeling is that also the commercial stations should work harder on the advertisers to prove that this 50+ group is growing and a potential very interesting target group with their high incomes.