Culture minister Ronald Plasterk wants to make it easier to remove broadcasters from the public broadcasting system.

He told parliament on Thursday evening that broadcasters which are not fulfilling their remit should lose their licence more quickly than is currently the case, Dutch media report.
At the moment, public broadcasting companies are inspected every five years to see if their programmes still adhere to the spirit of public broadcasting. If the report is negative, they are then given a further five years in which to improve their programming, after which their licence can be revoked. In practice this has never happened.
Plasterk wants to reduce the time between the ‘yellow card’ and the ‘red card’ to two years, say media reports.
His aim is to keep down the number of broadcasters in the public system which is threatening to become unmanageable. There are at least 14 public broadcasting companies occupying airtime on the three public channels.
New licences are issued every five years and broadcasters can submit their plans to the minister, provided they have signed up 50,000 members. If the minister is convinced they will add something new to the current programming, he will approve their application. They then get two hours tv time and nine hours radio time a week.
Telegraaf
Newspaper De Telegraaf and Telegraaf-owned shock weblog Geen Stijl are among the organisations hoping to win a licence this time round.
Henk Hagoort, chairman of the public broadcasting organisation NPO says he supports the plan but thinks it will be difficult for politicians to find quick, tough and measurable criteria against which to judge the broadcasters.
He is also concerned about the loss of jobs if broadcasters lose their licence. ‘I think this aspect will become a real brain teaser,’ he told news site Nu.nl.