RTL Nederland

RTL Nederland

Industry	Media
Founded	1996
Headquarters	Hilversum, Netherlands
Products	Television Radio
Owner	RTL Group
Parent	Bertelsmann
Website	RTL Nederland

RTL Nederland is a subsidiary of the RTL Group. The media company is located in Hilversum. Although the licences of its TV-stations RTL 4, RTL 5, RTL 7 and RTL 8 are issued by Luxembourg, the company targets the Dutch market. Its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is Bert Habets, who used to be the Chief Financial Officer of RTL Nederland.

Brief history

RTL flags

Until 2004 RTL Nederland was known as the Holland Media Group (HMG), a joint-venture founded in 1996 between RTL 4 SA (CLT-UFA) and Veronica Association. Veronica became a commercial broadcaster in 1995, when it left the public broadcasting system (owned by NOS (Nederlandse Omroep Stichting) at the time) and joined RTL. RTL 4 SA then consisted of the two television channels RTL 4 and RTL 5. HMG partnered with Saban in the television channel TV10. Fox later bought HMG's share in TV10, but failed to obtain its goals and sold the operation to SBS Broadcasting, which, in turn, rebranded the channel as V8.

Veronica exited the HMG combination in 2001, and the channel was renamed Yorin by RTL. RTL Group SA owned 100% of the company. In August 2004, HMG renamed itself RTL Nederland. On 12 August 2005, the television channel Yorin was renamed RTL 7 as a 'new' Luxembourgish TV station. Radio station Yorin FM was sold to SBS Broadcasting in 2006, which renamed it Caz!.

In August 2007 Dutch media mogul John de Mol's company Talpa Media Holding obtained a 26.3% share in RTL Nederland in exchange for its television channel Tien and national radio station Radio 538. RTL Nederland launched RTL 8 on 18 August 2007. In 2011 Talpa worked with Finnish media conglomerate Sanoma to buy the Dutch activities of SBS Broadcasting from German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 Media. As part of that deal De Mol sold his shares in RTL Nederland to the RTL Group. He retained the ownership of Radio 538 and its sister stations Radio 10 Gold and SLAM!FM.

Channels

Television

• RTL 4
• RTL 5
• RTL 7
• RTL 8
• RTL Z
• RTL Crime - Digital only
• RTL Lounge - Digital only
• RTL Telekids - Digital only

Radio

• RTL Lounge Radio

Streaming catchup and Video on Demand services

• RTL XL
• Videoland

References

• Contant, Peter (2000) "De TV-Oorlog" Utrecht/Antwerpen, Kosmos-Z&K Uitgevers, ISBN 90-215-8579-0

External links

• RTL Nederland