There is no radio and television licence fee in The Netherlands, up till 1988 there were such fees, so not only for television but also for radio. The fee was divided in fee A and fee B: A had to be paid by people in possession of a TV apparatus, and fee B by those who possessed a radio. The fee had to be paid just once in a household, family. So whatever the number of sets.
The law that covered these fees, was revised in 1988. A new law, called "De Mediawet" (media law), was installed. This law stipulated what everyone including e.g. the region or province where one lives should pay. And on July 1st 1997 the service that regulated everything was transformed, converted into, an independant institution.
Everything is now government funded (hope that's the right expression). Apart from that, we have the system of broadcasting corporations, no one is obliged to become a member of those corporations, the largest are: NOS (neutral), KRO (roman catholic), NCRCV (protestant), VPRO (also protestant but of another denomination), TROS (neutral). The number of members determinate how much hours each of them is allocated to fill with programmes of their denomination. Each one of these corporations, apart from NOS, publishes its own weekly magazine in which all programmes of all denominations, plus all programmes of e.g. Belgium, Germany, the UK (BBC) are mentioned, so everyone can look for his/her favourite programmes of other countries. My favourite programmes are practically only BBC programmes!
One becomes a member of any of the aforementioned corporations by subscribing to their weekly magazines, so we have a subscription to the VPRO weekly, not because of the fact that VPRO are a christian organization, but because of the reviews of films that they publish, and because we are now so used to that weekly that it is easiest for us. We did try another one in the past, just for a short period, we didnot like it at all!
NOS (Nederlandse Omroep Stichting) which means Dutch Broadcasting Corporation, is called N.P.O. since 2007, this means Nederlandse Publieke Omroep, so Dutch Public Broadcasting (Co.)
Without Google and Wikipedia I could not have written this contribution! So thanks to both.
Marianne Smits-Jansen
Roeremond, The Netherlands
email:
ma.smits@hetnet.nl