ABSTRACT
The Dutch broadcasting system, like the British, is essentially based upon the assumption that broadcasting should be a question of public service. However, its philosophical and organizational foundations differ considerably from the British emphasis on national broadcasting, as embodied by the BBC. The nationalist principle has never succeeded in becoming the prevailing organizational force in Dutch broadcasting. Since its inception, it has been based upon a very different set of loyalties and commitments. To be sure, attempts to found a national, monopolistic, BBC-like broadcasting organization were undertaken, both in the very beginning of radio (early 1920s) and after the Second World War, but several social, cultural and political forces, which need not be explicated here, have led to the emergence and institutional consolidation of a broadcasting system in the Netherlands which is unique in the world, and which has come to be known as a system of ‘pillarization’ (Van den Heuvel 1976). In an early article which aimed to explain the Dutch system to foreigners, for example, it was characterized by the authors as a ‘third way’ of regulating broadcasting, alongside the American commercial system and the British national monopoly system (De Boer and Cameron 1955).
