The three Dutch public broadcasting channels Nederland 1, 2 and 3 should be open to programming from other sources, the Dutch arts council said on Thursday.

Reform of the current system, in which a large number of public broadcasters divide up airtime according to the size of their membership, is necessary because of pending budget cuts, the arts council said in a series of recommendations to culture minister Sander Dekker.

In addition, public broadcasters have to deal with changes in viewing habits, a shift to online services and more international competition.

Genre-based

The central public broadcasting body NPO should be reformed into a ‘media organisation with a creative heart’, the arts council said in a new report.

Editors-in-chief should be genre-based and they should decide what is broadcast. Some 50% of the budget should be spent on public broadcasting companies and the rest elsewhere. For example, editors-in-chief should be able to buy-in programming directly from abroad, without the intervention of a broadcasting company.

In addition, the public broadcasters should do more to differentiate themselves from the commercial channels, the NRC quoted the report as saying. The priorities should be news, Dutch-language series, documentaries, education, culture and children’s programming.

The membership requirement should also be dropped, the arts council said. Until now, anyone has been able to launch a public broadcasting company if they can get at least 50,000 members.

There are currently 21 public broadcasting companies, but their number is being merged into eight in 2016 and then again to six. Public broadcasting is funded by a combination of government money and advertising, but state funding is being slashed by €200m a year from 2015.