Netherlands

[NL] RTL5 will not be shut down after all

IRIS 1996-4:1/30

Ad van Loon

European Audiovisual Observatory

In IRIS 1996-2: 14 we reported that the Holland Media Group SA (HMG) had decided to shut down its television channel RTL5 following the decision taken by the European Commission of 20 September requiring HMG to sell RTL5.

In reaction to the decision, Mr Karel van Miert, the Commissioner responsible for competition matters, indicated that this constituted a new situation in which the Commission would have to reconsider its initial point of view.

In the meantime, as we report elsewhere in this issue of IRIS a new private commercial television channel is being established in the Netherlands, i.e., Sport 7, which will specialise in sports. For the European Commission this, together with the fact that HMG has announced that it will change the programme format of RTL5, is sufficient reason to no longer insist on the selling of RTL5 by HMG. As from September, RTL5 would only broadcast films and magazine types of programmes; the other types of programmes that RTL5 has broadcast so far would be taken over by Veronica, which is also part of HMG.