The TV station Tien – which has the exclusive rights to show Dutch premier division football – is to be axed this summer after two years on air. Media tycoon John de Mol who set up and owns Talpa, the company that operates the channel, has signed a deal with RTL.

Under this deal the football and a number of other successful programmes will be screened by RTL. In return De Mol has acquired a 26.3% share in RTL. No financial details were released.
De Mol’s radio station Radio 538 will be taken over by RTL as part of the agreement which was made public late yesterday afternoon after months of secret negotiations. All the staff at Talpa are to lose their jobs although some of the hundred employees may be offered new positions at RTL.
At the same time RTL announced it has plans to start a fourth TV channel (it already operates RTL4, 5 and 7) but further details were not released.
John de Mol told the press that he does not see the end of Tien as a defeat. ‘Defeat is a big word, it’s a disappointment,’ he told ANP.
This is the second time a TV channel set up by De Mol has failed – the sport channel Sport7 suffered a similar fate in the 1990s.