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Double trouble
The
problems faced by the Netherlands government when reconciling broadcasting
with the structure of their society led to a system where each defined group
had access to the air.
Thus
Catholics, Socialists and Liberals each had a 'slice' of the airwaves
available for them to air their views and show their distinctness from each
other. In Belgium, the government faced a greater problem. Their society was
also stratified in the same manner as in neighbouring Holland.
However, the
Dutch situation couldn't easily be made to work in Belgium for a greater
reason: language. Whilst the Netherlands 'pillared' society had the common
ground of Dutch as a first language, Belgium, an artificial state created by
the wars that tore Europe apart in the 18th and 19th centuries, couldn't boast
this.
The southern
half of the country, Wallonia, has a very Gallic flavour and the people speak
French. In the north, Flanders, the people conversely speak a dialect of
Dutch and have a more nothern European attitude to life. These are major
differences in subtle ways, preventing the two halves finding common ground.
The situation
was made worse with the end of the Industrial Revolution. Since the 19th
century, the manufacturing wealth was located in Wallonia, whilst Flanders
remained poorer and rural. The Walloons had dominated Belgium society in ways
greater than the English domination of the Scottish and the Welsh. When the
fortunes started slowly to reverse after World War II, the Walloons could only
look on in horror as their influence waned and the threat of domination from
Flanders approached.
The government
of Belgium had long pursued a policy of integrating the two cultures, and
Belgian radio had performed this function. When television began in 1953, the
government planned for a single national channel providing a dual-language
service. But by 1953 the cracks were beginning to appear in this policy and
in Belgian society.
The central
government began to look at a different way of dealing with the problems of
two societies within one country. Slowly the policy that would lead to
federalisation of the country and the creation of a bi-lingual commonwealth by
the end of the 1980s was put into place.
The first step
had to be in broadcasting, an area that touch the lives of almost all
inhabitants. The television service was split into two, in Dutch in the north
(but available throughout the country) and French in the south (also available
throughout). As federalisation continued, the two services gained
independence from each other and, eventually, from the federal government.
The two
services were, like the Walloons and the people of Flanders, completely
different. The Francophone RTBF resembled RTF/TF1 in France, with a similar
mix of news and entertainment and southern European production values. In the
north, BRT was more like the Dutch NOS or a non-commercial version of RTL from
Luxembourg, with more northern European production values.
The separation
of the service and their devolution to the regional governments meant that
they soon began to drift far apart from each other in policy and programming.
With BRT seeing a natural competitor in the Dutch services and RTBF looking
toward RTF for competition, one could be forgiven for thinking that the two
had forgotten the other's existence.
The changes in
emphasis wrought by the 1980s showed this most strongly when RTBF began to
accept advertising in order to compete directly with TF1. BRTN (formerly BRT)
retained its non-commercial standing, partially to counteract the rampant
commercialism of the Dutch competition.
All this leads
to an interesting question in relation to broadcasting. Can broadcasting be a
unifier of peoples? The answer, annoyingly, is both yes and no. Pan-European
satellite transmissions never really worked, as given the choice between bad
programming in English and bad programming badly dubbed into a local language,
people always choose the latter.
When faced
with popular entertainment in French from TF1 and a lesser quality alternative
from RTBF, people chose TF1. However, when the quality question was evened
out, RTBF beat TF1 simply by offering local entertainment and news over the
pan-Francophone alternative.
Unified
broadcasting, as used by INR/NRI in Belgium between 1953 and 1960, failed to
unify the audience who felt alienated by each others' broadcasts.
Regionalised broadcasts from RTBF and BRTN were welcomed for this very
reason. The official split between the two halves of the country in
broadcasting and politically has had the effect of unifying Belgium. Perhaps
the broadcasters in Germany and the UK who believe that a unified,
non-regional system is the direction people prefer should look on the Belgian
experience as being that of European nations in microcosm.
Dafydd
Hancock
Compilation © 2002 Transdiffusion Broadcasting System
Text © 2001 Dafydd Hancock. All rights reserved. Used with permission
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