RN Wereldomroep 3.0 : Are they serious?

Radio Netherlands may have left the radio airwaves in English, but it still has a budget for 2013 of around 14 million Euro. The new era for the organisation starts today, July 1st, although the RNW website is remarkably vague about what exactly those left are supposed to do as from Monday morning.

The company will target four areas of the world where free speech is doing less well: sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, China and Central America. 

RNW will concentrate on three central themes: democracy, human rights and sexual rights. 

RNW will also home in on a new target audience: people from 15 to 30 - students and young professionals.

So the structure is similar to Endemol and Talpa, it's a production company not a broadcaster. Except that instead of entertainment, they will make shows/websites connected with democracy, human rights and sexual rights. Difficult topics to be sure.

Free Press Unlimited does more than the written word

It's strange that this new mission is so similar to what some other organisations in the Netherlands (such as FreePress Unlimited) are already doing. The overlap smacks more of a knee-jerk politically-correct rescue plan to spend 14 million Euro rather than doing something really original for which there is a real demand in those target markets. The argumentation for the RNW Chinese mission is perhaps the biggest mystery.

China blocks the Internet, though, why target there?

RNW has for a number of years been very active in China via the internet and social media – the new RNW will carry on this work. RNW will not be as badly hit as are the BBC or the Voice of America by China’s mass internet blockades. That’s because of RNW’s method of disseminating the information.

On one hand, the Chinese-language RNW website offers information about lots of aspects of Dutch society, from fashion and design to gay rights and euthanasia. On the other hand, there’s also more ‘risky’ information which is hard to get in China. Some important themes are the influence of citizens on government, corruption and internet freedom.

This makes the new RNW look more like an old style "clandestine" broadcaster, operating under enemy radar. But are Chinese youth really searching for this kind of info (euthanasia?). The statements about VOA and BBC are just plain wrong. It looks to me like RNW has ignored what the EU, USA and BBC does outside the field of news coverage on other sites. 

Not blocked in China

The RNW website continues...

Why is RNW targeting young people in sub-Saharan Africa?RNW has chosen eight countries in the region where the development of democracy, human rights and sexual rights is problematic: the Democratic republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. The countries are also in many cases troubled by poor governance, political violence, poverty and corruption. RNW will develop programmes, formats and web productions for the audience in this region. 

There are hundreds of NGO's across Europe already doing this. Have organisations like Radio Benevolencija or Search for Common Ground, or BBC Media Action got it all wrong? What is RNW going to add rather than just make more of the same?

Questions Need Answers Fast

The new mission for RNW was announced in September last year. As we head towards new elections in the Netherlands, the austerity plans are already out to find more money to cut from the public purse. So the new announcements from RNW raise the following questions.

• Why is this new mission needed? 
• What is RNW doing differently from other European NGO's that makes the new mission an essential part of Dutch foreign policy? How does it fit with what others are already doing? 
• What would happen if RNW 3.0 didn't happen?
• Can RNW show it clearly understands the information needs of those audiences? (Central America - yes, but the rest?) 
• How will it work with partners to share effective engaging stories? 
• How does it define success? "Likes" on Facebook? Website uniques?
• Isn't it time to change the name? Its not a radio station, nor it is a world broadcaster any more.

If the new RNW doesn't think this through fast, then more cuts are coming.  

Free Voice or No Voice- What remains for RNW?

The closedown of Radio Netherlands Dutch language radio service on May 11th was a fitting tribute to a job well done. Having studied the station's history several times for various anniversaries and specials, I came to the conclusion that despite being only a shadow of much larger operations like BBC World Service, VOA or Deutsche Welle, the station managed to punch well above it weight. 

The station PCJJ which preceded it was set up as a commercial venture - Philips couldn't sell radios in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) if there was nothing to listen to. And the discovery that was a propagation path at certain times of the day between Holland and Indonesia meant programmes on shortwave made sense. After the war, as Holland recovered from Nazi occupation, many Dutch emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada. 


So I would argue that Radio Nederland Wereldomroep was probably one of the first social networks. It provided a way for Dutch speakers to keep in touch with the shared experiences of family and friends separated by distance. It was crude by today's standards, requiring quite a lot of energy to produce a crackly voice in a loudspeaker thousands of miles away. But it was a human voice. And that was one of the advantages of the programmes from Hilversum. They sounded like they were made by human beings rather than government officials. In the marathon 24 hour closedown transmission last week, they celebrated the people who had made RNW what it was, rather than the network itself. Dutch speakers abroad still have access to BVN satellite television and websites from domestic radio and TV stations as well as newspaper publishers and on-line news channels like nu.nl.


The perception by the general Dutch public now is that the Wereldomroep is no more. Indeed, Radio has gone, Nederlands has gone and as legislation is being changed, so the Wereldomroep (literally World broadcasting) will be taken out of the statute books. 


From now on, Holland will only have public broadcasters on a local, regional and national level. I had hoped to hear a clear signal from RNW last Friday as to what will happen next. After all, 14 million Euro had been earmarked for some kind of external broadcasting activity as from January 1st next year. But the on-air debate broadcast in the final hour of the Dutch service was sadly the weakest link in the whole production. It was muddled, confusing and those arguing for stopping it altogether had jibes that quickly dominated. Definitely a case of the blind leading the blind and an important one-time opportunity missed.


Yes, there's a plan on how that 14 million Euro of public money could be spent. But it's not based on a clearly defined audience need in the same way that RNW was the answer back in 1947. It's politically driven piece rather like the lists that NHK Radio Japan used to get from the Japanese government - "Here is some money, you are commanded to broadcast so many hours a day to North Korea, etc. Do the best you can". Frankly, that's no way to run a modern media company. Never has been. Government make terrible programmes because they are interested in themselves not the audience - It's all about shouting a message above the noise, not listening to what people are saying from within.


Other NGOs in Holland are running radio stations into specific areas like Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe and Iran. They have focus and, at least in the case of Sudan, are filling a void that hasn't yet been filled by others. It's a project, so when the mission is over, it will evaporate. Success is driven and measured by audience need. 

This all reminds me of that poster in the window of Bush House referring to BBC World Service - audiences are at the heart of everything we do. For RNW, that heart has stopped beating because everything it stood for has been removed. End of a era. Over and out. That leaves me with a huge respect for the past. But no hope for the future..at least not like this.