Medialand Nederland is controlled by the Dutch government (NPO), by severalGerman and Flemish families and one Dutch entrepreneur. Media journalist MarkKoster sees the panels moving further: even less competition.
John de Mol was combative on November 24, 2017. In the Amsterdam DeLaMartheater, the media tycoon launched an attack on Google, Facebook, Netflix andthe Dutch government. De Mol had incorporated television channel SBS that dayand now it was time to declare revolution and declare war on global mediaoligarchs.
Then De Mol was still big
‘If we don’t watch out, the large foreign parties will soon control themajority of the advertising market and we will only be able to watch Chinese,British and American channels.’ As if the Chinese care about our privacy, BigBrother sneered in the theater of his former business friend, Joop van denEnde.
De Mol believed that more facilities should be freed up to be able to defendthemselves against American and Chinese buying groups that have no regard forDutch media heritage. Although De Mol himself had sold his company twice toforeign parties (Endemol and ITV), he saw the Googles and the Facebooks ascompetitors with predatory behaviour. They do benefit from the infrastructuralbenefits, but bear no tax burden.
It’s been over five years, but it’s like returning to someone who’s taken anLSD pill and is hallucinating. Nothing is left of De Mol’s daydream. Thecommercial Dutch media market has declined in five years.
Where Winston Gerschtanowitz, host of the day in DeLaMar, still spoke toughabout ‘milking content’ and Pim Schmitz, the Talpa CEO, still spoke Freudianwords and called SBS a ‘media threat’, the revolution call in DeLaMar was alast convulsion of a proud Dutch media neighborhood supermarket.
John de Mol, once the country’s biggest media tycoon, has not grown, but hasshrunk. SBS/Talpa is having a hard time and is looking for support from RTLNederland, a daughter who has been placed with a host family by parent companyBertelsmann (of the German Mohn family). It is a sweet child, but it is betterthat she will soon find a rich friend to survive independently.
The merger has become a life and death struggle for Big Brother. SBS is adying house, with which you no longer play dice, but for which you are lookingfor an oxygen tank.
The demise of SBS
In 2011, De Mol took over the people’s channel SBS (together with Sanoma) for1 billion euros, in 2017 a third of that was left when he incorporated it.Five years later, it’s worth even less.
The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) must now assesswhether the merger of SBS and RTL may go ahead. The cartel guard not onlylooks at the size of the TV merger, spreadsheets will also have to becompleted to see whether Talpa / RTL is not a monopolist in advertisingpricing and whether there is enough room for independent producers to sellprograms . ACM has previously intervened (as AFM’s legal predecessor). When DeMol tried to acquire an interest in both RTL and SBS in 2011, he had to giveup one of the two interests. That then became RTL. Then De Mol acted out ofstrength, now out of weakness.
The lame and the blind
Cynics speak of a fusion between ‘a lame man and a blind man’. At firstglance, Talpa and RTL seem like a toothless couple, compared to the strengthof the foreign market parties. Let that merger go ahead, you might say.
And producers can go anywhere. With streamers with deep pockets, such asDisney+, Amazon, Netflix. And also at Videoland from RTL.
Television is a 70-year-old industry, faded glory comparable to the textileindustry in Twente in the mid-1950s: the TV nobility still thrives on statusand fame, but is sinking into a nostalgic daze.
It went crescendo for more than a quarter of a century. Since the 1990s, Dutchmedia makers have become global players, but now they have to scramble ontheir home market to earn a few more bucks.
De Mol’s last big hit The Voice dates from twelve years ago. Talpa has –especially in the past year – transformed into a flop factory. Widelyannounced series, such as Million Dollar Island , Think inside the box and_Song at first sight_ turned out to be unsaleable formats. Does RTL reallywant to team up with a man who had his creative peak at the turn of the lastcentury?
The successors are waiting in the wings. They do not come from their owncountry, but from across the border. On the Dutch market, the ChineseByteDance (met Tiktok ), the Swedish Spotify, the American media giantsFacebook (although declining) and Instagram, Google and its subsidiaryYouTube, Amazon, Twitter and Netflix are taking away viewing and listeningtime from the traditional commercial RTV parties. Whether ACM should taketheir dominant positions into account in the merger in the Netherlands is arelevant question, to which no answer has yet been formulated.
Government is lagging behind
As De Mol rightly pointed out in 2017, the Netherlands has not developed astrategy to combat the global media superpowers with pan-Europeancountervailing power. Europe is trying to put up barriers and make Google andFacebook responsible for their rampage, but the wall is porous. Legislation isoften outdated before it is introduced.
In entertainment, that’s not so serious. In fact, for years we may have beenlooking at substandard entertainment, and consumers have begun to catch upwith better-produced value-for-money series with more emphasis on production,directing and copywriting.
It becomes more poignant when the news provision falls into the hands of’uncontrolled’ foreign parties. Facebook was certainly a breeding ground forfake news and for conspiracy thinkers who were not given a platform on regularmedia, especially during corona times. But also in the serious media,independent sanctuaries are in danger of disappearing.
De Mol wanted to oppose Google and Facebook with the takeover of De TelegraafMedia Groep (which failed) and the purchase of the ANP. But the press agencyhad so tightly closed the editorial independence that no added value could becreated for Talpa titles.
The Belgians have the newspapers
Five years later, the Dutch news landscape outside the Mediapark has changedinto a duopoly: a market in which two players rule the roost.
The Mediahuis of the Flemish Leysen family owns De Telegraaf, NRC, severalregional newspapers in North Holland and radio station Sublime. There ishardly any editorial exchange. NRC and Telegraaf are two opposing titles.Music channel Sublime is negligibly small to be a monopolist.
The Van Thillo family continues to advance
Much greater is the power of the other player: DPG Media. This conglomerateowns Het Parool, AD, NU.nl, Libelle and Margriet, Donald Duck, De Volkskrant,Trouw, seven regional titles and the popular radio station Q_Music.
DPG CEO Christian van Thillo, who ventilated the same criticism in Europe asDe Mol in the Netherlands, is aiming for a TV channel to distribute andpromote DPG content, as is already quite successful in Belgium. In Belgium,DPG owns the commercial channel VTM and Van Thillo, called ‘Rupert Murdoch andSilvio Berlusconi in one person’ by opponents, built a media empire thatcombines news, entertainment and need-to-know information.
Unlike Mediahuis, DPG can and does exchange content. A large part of theregional newspapers is filled by copy from the editors of the Algemeen Dagblad– to the horror of some former editors-in-chief. Alex Engbers of De Stentorbelieved that sensationalism kills the content of the regional titles. ‘On theDPG dashboards you can see which headlines are being picked up and whichstories are being read. Consumer behavior on the internet is leading in thechoice of stories.’
DPG has been working for years on its own advertising distribution channelseparate from Google and Facebook. It operates an ‘independent’ comparisonsite that offers consumers bargains on mortgages, used cars and insurance.
It goes without saying that a deal for ‘Independer’ is also a deal for DPG andtherefore for the Van Thillo family. John de Mol did not speak about De Belgfive years ago. At that time, the two tycoons in the radio file still marchedtogether against the disruptive machinations of the government. Interests arenow different.
Van Thillo wants to take over a TV channel in the Netherlands and has beenstaring at RTL for ages, that pretty girl looking for a date. Van Thillo hopesthat the merger with De Mol will collapse so that he can strike. Big Brotherappears to have another big brother in the Low Countries. He is not fromSilicon Valley, but from Antwerp.
This is the second episode of a short series by media journalist MarkCoster for Wynia’s Week about the Dutch media market. You will find thefirst episode HERE.
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