The Dutch broadcasting system is hybrid. Commercial broadcasters have been around for only about a decade or so, and inevitably they have stolen market share from the state-funded system. The state-funded system is in itself a relic from the way Dutch society used to be organized in the first half of the 20th century when radio started to make its appearance. The Dutch word to describe this is "verzuiling," meaning "columnization." People grew up, lived and worked mostly within their own "column" of society. A catholic would send his children to a catholic school, read a catholic paper, go to a catholic bar, sport at a catholic club and listen to the catholic radio station. Other columns included various protestant denominations, the socilaists, the liberals and some smaller groups. To a remarkable extent these columns lived parallel lives interacting to a surprisingly limited degree. In this environment the Dutch state-funded broadcast system was formed. Each group could set up its own broadcasting organization, which would be funded to a small part from member contributions and to a large part from "listening money," a tax levied on every radio (and later TV) owner. The amount of air time was determined by the number of members.

To this day, most of the original broadcasters still exist, even though the societal conditions which led to their emergence have long since vanished in the post-war secularization of Dutch society. They still claim to be true to their original mission and to represent their particular constituency, but those claims are very hollow. Most of them just produce mass-market TV and radio programs with government funding. The old "Listening Money" has been abolished, and the funding now comes out of general taxation. And now we have commercial broadcasters which have larger market shares.

In order to support all these broadcasters, the Dutch tax payer has to ante up no less than 650 million euro. To put this into context: NPR gets about $43 million a year, while PBS gets $620 million. While privatizing NPR and PBS are probably good ideas in their own right, the relative cost to the US taxpayer is much less than what the Dutch taxpayer gets hit with.

A large part of the money is wasted on duplication of functions within each of the broadcasters. Some of them are now cooperating, such as the block of NCRV (protestant, don't ask me which variant), KRO (catholic) and AVRO (liberal), known as AKN. In their palatial new headquarters each of the three members still has its own radio studios, their own staff and presenters. Supposedly to maintain their identity. The five public radio channels cost about 100 million euro a year and get an average of 760,000 listeners. The commercial broadcasters have 1.14 million listeners and don't get a single cent from the taxpayer.

It is time to overhaul the public broadcasting system. It has long outlived its original purpose and has become yet another self-sustaining bureaucracy that feeds off the public trough. We don't really need 5 radio stations and 3 TV stations funded by the taxpayer. Cutting off public funding would be a start to help the broadcasters focus on controlling costs. Many will not survive in a competitive environment, and will be gobbled up by competitors. But consolidation here is a good thing. We really don't need dozens of broadcasters in this country. Those who do have a dedicated audience will be able to survive. The others won't be missed.