| Type | Public broadcasting |
|---|---|
| Country | Netherlands |
| Founded | 1 September 2010 |
| Owner | NPO |
| Official website | Website |
NTR is a Dutch public-service broadcaster. It supplies television and radio programming of an educational and cultural nature to the Netherlands Public Broadcasting system. NTR was created in 2010, following the merger of the NPS (Nederlandse Programma Stichting) (Dutch Programme Foundation) and two educational broadcasters Teleac and RVU.
Broadcasters (in the Dutch context, listener and viewer associations) do not have their own stations but are allotted time on the three public television and eight public radio networks broadly in relation to the size of their respective memberships. NTR, as a statutory organization however, has no members.
Contents |
The Radio Volks Universiteit (People's Radio University) was the oldest educational broadcaster in the country. It was established in 1930 by the Dutch Association of the People's Universities. It had airtime via the AVRO and VARA broadcasting associations. A licence to operate independently was granted on June 14, 1931 and became a public broadcaster in its own right in 1932 [1]
In 1983 RVU appeared for the first time on television, airing a small amount of programmes on the public channels Nederland 2, moving to Nederland 3 in 1988.
Its mission was to bring informative and educational programmes to encourage the active participation in society.
An initiative to air educational programming on public television led to the creation of the Television Academy (Teleac) in 1963.[2][3]
Meanwhile Nederlandse Onderwijs Televisie (NOT) (Netherlands Educational Television) began operations on the 27 June 1962,[4] evolving from the Netherlands Education Film board in The Hague. Its purpose was to supply primary and secondary teachers with educational programming for use in classes. The programmes were made in cooperation with Teleac, RVU and the NOS. Despite this, it didn't have a broadcasting licence of its own. That changed in 1988, when the new Media Act established NOT as an independent broadcaster. Schools programmes made by the NOS were thus transferred to the new organization, as were their employees, moving base from The Hague to Hilversum.
Early tentative steps to fuse the educational broadcasters were made in 1996, with Teleac and NOT merging to form Teleac/NOT; both organizations having common and shared goals to produce educational programmes. It reverted to its original name Teleac in September 2009, utilising three brands for its output: Teleac (for adults), SchoolTV (4-18 yrs) and PeuterTV (babies and toddlers). A further joint venture was expanded upon with both RVU and Teleac forming Educom in 2005.
On 28 April 1994 a new Media Act confirmed that the existing broadcasting associations within the public framework would see their memberships to the system extended to a further ten years, in spite of ratings and were to increase their co-operation with each other. The Act also reinforced the brand identity of the public channels over the associations.
A new programming quota was outlined in which associations were required to produce:
The NOS, which had produced such programming in addition to its core news output were to split in half, and pass on those duties onto a newly created public broadcaster. The split was confimed with the launch of the Nederlandse Programma Stichting (NPS) on 1 January 1995.[5][6]
In mid-2005, Jan Peter Balkenende's second cabinet presented plans to renovate the broadcasting system, including abolition of the NPS by 2007. The proposal was met with fierce resistance from many viewers and listeners, given the dedicated and fairly sizeable audience for the NPS's output. The idea was that other broadcasters would take over the type of programming that the NPS had previously provided.
There was little confidence among viewers, however, that this would actually happen. It was speculated at the time that the real motive for the proposed abolition was that the governing parties (Christian Democrat and liberal conservative) saw the foundation's output as being too left-wing. The plans were in the end withdrawn following the elections of November 2006.
On the 1 September 2010, the NPS, Teleac and RVU merged to form a single entity. The NTR name is composed of the first letter of the three formerly separate organizations.[7] The idea behind the merger is one of money being more efficiently distributed amonsgt fewer broadcasting organizations. The new organization has no members, as per the Dutch public system norm as it is a statuory public service broadcaster and a legal entity inherited from its predecessors.
Its programming focus is now concetrated on news analysis, education, culture, children's education and ethnic minority output.[8]
NTR's on-screen branding consists of their acronym in lower case ("ntr") followed by a colon punctuation mark (":").
Its mission, as stated from its Business Plan of 2010:
The NTR contributes to a democratic knowledge society by creating informational, cultural and educational programs for the entire audience with the following core values: independent, impartial, objective, reliable, respect for people and their values, and orientation towards a society of active, independent and curious citizens.
Some examples of NTR programming:
|
|||||||||||