BPN 1089 Volkskrant wants to partner Het Gesprek

Talk television station Het Gesprek (The Conversation) is in exclusive talks with the PCM morning newspaper De Volkskrant. De Volkskrant wants to partner Het Gesprek, but Het Gesprek wants only to welcome De Volkskrant, when it brings along a lot of money. The talks should deliver by summer 2008.

Het Gesprek started in October 2007 as a talk television station, of which the broadcasts are distributed by internet and cable. The station has made a toilsome start in attracting an audience. In the viewing figures of the Dutch television stations, Het Gesprek did not show at all. The talk station can presently be received in almost the whole of The Netherlands in analogue and digital modes. A public broadcast station, KRO, started some co-operation, but the station needs more to be regularly viewed. This is where De Volkskrant comes in; the newspaper should push Het Gesprek with its progressive and intellectual audience, consisting of a large group of singles. Het Gesprek will be able to strengthen its position in the field of content of the programs and marketing.

In the stern wave of De Volkskrant follows the television producer Harry de Winter, who has been an advisor to De Volkskrant in setting up its own television channel, codenamed Oase. De Winter wants also to partake with his company WinterMedia.

The exploitation of Het Gesprek costs 4,5 million euro, according to one of the founding fathers, Ruud Hendriks. De Volkskrant will have to pay 3 million euro for a minority share. And this is a hefty amount within the conglomerate of PCM. Recently De Volkskrant adopted the daily free newspaper DAG and pays 7 million euro for that adventure. Now De Volkskrant wants to pay 3 million euro for a minority on top of that.

Within the holding PCM there is doubt about these financial investments, but De Volkskrant considers the investment in Het Gesprek as an impulse to its multimedia strategy. De Volkskrant has already invested a lot of money in its website and in a video staff, and it produces television programs together with the public broadcast stations VPRO and MAX. Besides the financial problems of De Volkskrant, PCM has to deal with other multimedia projects. Last week PCM stopped the citizens’ journalism site Skoeps and it has a dubious citizens’ journalism experiment going in EN.nl.

Blog Posting Number: 1089

Tags: talk television, citizens' journalism

Het Gesprek: conversation or interview

On October 2, 2007 the crossmedia television channel Het Gesprek (The Conversation) was launched in the Netherlands. It advertised itself as the first channel worldwide with 24/7 interviews. The channel presents 24/7 interviews with Dutch VIPs on internet and from 19-24h on television channels. Quality, content and current affairs are the hallmarks of the new channel. It is an initiative of a group of Dutch television makers.

The idea for the channel was born out of dissatisfaction with the current interview practice on the Dutch television. Guests are invited for a talk show and get a few minutes to deliver oneliners, but they can hardly argue their cases or show other interesting aspects and are regularly interrupted by commercials. In the Dutch television scene there is only one television program Summer Guests by the Dutch broadcasting company VPRO. For this program the guest can browse the broadcast archives, propose their items and can freely talk. But this program is only broadcasted during summertime.

Het Gesprek is stimulating discussions in the public space. Het Gesprek takes time to interview guests coming from politics, art, literature, culture, sports, science and business. They are interviewed by experienced interviewers. Het Gesprek will offer daily four new interviews. On the website the viewers/users can access all the interviews, summaries, remarkable and prominent guests.

The format of the channel consists of: a home page, a program guide, the programs, opinion from the viewers and CVs of the guest which have been invited and the presenters. Of course the most charming feature of the web channel is the fact that you can view the programs at a later time than the real interview. In this way I could look at the broadcast about Picnic 07 in Amsterdam.

The TV channel has not started with a bang. In fact the weekly viewing figures have been too small to measure. Nationally, an average of just 2000 people was measured in the first week, a figure which has dwindled to 1000 viewers/users last week.
Will the channel improve in viewing figures? I have my doubts. Despite the fact that the channel was set up with venture money, it has hardly advertised itself (probably this was smart in the first weeks as the whole operation had to move shop). But I think that there is another problem. The channel is television projected on internet with an added archive function. It misses the social network features; in this way it is also like broadcasting. The internet users are basically back into their old role of almost passive viewers. There is no room for a phone-in and they even do not have the chance to put merit stars to the programs. The internet users will have to get involved in a different way than just sending a reaction in the section opinion; this looks like the old, tradition newspaper and broadcast tolerance. It should create its own community with members from LinkedIn, Xing or Hyves.
The channel’s name Het Gesprek has been translated in English to The Conversation. As it stands now Het Gesprek could be better translated to The Interview.

Blog Posting Number: 992

Tags: webcast, broadcast