Best Frienemies Forever?” Public and Private Broadcasting Partnerships in Flanders

Abstract

Relationships between public and private broadcasters have traditionally been considered highly competitive and more often than not, conflicting. However, at the same time, private and public broadcaster relationships have been symbiotic as well. Since the liberalisation of media markets and the advent of commercial television in the 1980s, public broadcasters have increasingly reoriented themselves to compete with private broadcasters. They have been embracing commercial broadcasting strategies consecutively leading toward a convergence of content and services (Saeys and Coppens, 2003; Tracey, 1998). In addition, public broadcasters’ legitimacy today partly rests on setting a “standard” in terms of quality and innovativeness. In other words: it should lead private players by example (Donders and Van den Bulck, 2012). In recent years, policymakers have increasingly picked up on an “ecosystem” approach, encouraging different types of collaboration between public and private media broadcasters. This, so they hope, will ease arguments on alleged anti-competitive behaviour of public broadcasters and potentially help public and private broadcasters to face new competitors and related challenges in a more convincing way. Such a more pragmatic approach to deal with the dual broadcasting system that is dominant in Europe (Harcourt, 2005) has especially been followed in smaller media markets like Flanders (i.e. the northern part of Belgium).