Weblog GeenStijl – part of the Telegraaf media group – wants to start up its own tv company so it can bring its particular form of wet t-shirt lad culture to a wider audience.

Apparently GeenStijl does not think there is enough puerile humour and wonky hand-held camera work on tv already. So it is trying to collect the necessary 50,000 members that it needs to be considered for a public broadcasting licence.
GeenStijl’s tv arm is called PowNed – pronouced pownd – and is charging prospective members a bargain price of just €5.72 to join up and ‘shake up Hilversum’ which is where the Dutch broadcasting industry is based.
On Friday, commercial broadcasting company Veronica gave PowNed a nice fat advertisement when it dedicated 30 minutes to GeenStijl’s efforts to get on aboard the public broadcasting gravy train.
Holland’s newspapers have recently been up in arms about the unfair competition they face from the public broadcasters. These broadcasters, funded by the taxpayer, compete with commercial companies by setting up fancy websites and even publishing magazines under the auspices of the public good.
Perhaps with PowNed we have the Telegraaf attempting to get its own back by trying to syphon off taxpayers’ cash for its own ends. Thanks to Veronica, of course.