All eyes are on VRT CEO Frederik Deplace and his questioning on Wednesday in the media committee of the Flemish Parliament. The stakes are more than a personal matter. The question is: what future do the Flemish negotiators grant the VRT?
Anyone who read the morning papers could not ignore it. Whether it was The Latest News was, The Morning, The Standard, The Time of The Newsblad and sister magazines, they all placed the same new emphasis. The news gathering and the commentary about the dismissal of content director Ricus Jansegers and Lotte Vermeir, network manager of VRT 1 and VRT Canvas, was overnight evolved into a razor-sharp critique of the performance of CEO Frederik Delaplace. The question about his performance – and therefore his dismissal – is explicitly asked.
However, a dismissal of a VRT CEO is never a matter of business criteria alone. Achieving the desired figures, the management style used, social peace, the reputation of the public broadcaster: all of these things play a role, but ultimately a VRT CEO stands or falls with his political backing. If there is no majority in the Flemish government that expresses confidence in him, then it is over. If that support is there, he can continue to function.
Life insurance
Until recently it seemed that Frederik Delaplace had negotiated an additional life insurance policy for himself by quite explicitly referring to his master’s voice to listen. That boss-above-boss is/was Jan Jambon (N-VA), minister-president of the Flemish government. Since his appointment at the VRT, Delaplace has positioned himself as a kind of ‘reasonable partner’ of the private media groups. That too is politically significant: not only Voka, but certainly also DPG Media, with Christian Van Thillo as executive chairman of the group management, have the reputation of being ‘the real bosses’ of Bart De Wever. Delaplace kept the VRT fairly docile and skillful within the boundaries in which the private publishers like to see the public broadcaster function. Will the N-VA continue to protect the ‘loyal’ Delaplace?
Drama
The matter is extra complex because there is indeed still a caretaker Flemish government, but today the (expected) new Flemish government is also working on a new coalition agreement. These negotiations are being conducted by other parties.
Experience shows that it is not the outgoing cabinet but the governments-in-the-making that call the shots. This was already the case at the Belgian level with the appointment of Hadja Lahbib (MR) as the new Belgian candidate for the European Commissioner. It is no different in Flanders: it is not the ministers and parties of the Jambon government, but the negotiators around Matthias Diependaele (N-VA) who hold the cards of the VRT.
While all the media attention is focused on Delaplace – with open letters, opinion pieces, interviews and all the drama that goes with it – it is not really his head that is on the table of the Flemish negotiators. The real VRT debate is not about the person, style or mistakes of the CEO. It is primarily about the political proposals, with new agreements on the future of the VRT. That is the real stake in the Flemish government negotiations. The essential debate is not about Frederik Delaplace.
Not that the ‘Delaplace riot’ plays no role, on the contrary. The intensity of the earthquake that once again hits the former ‘House of Trust’ reinforces the image of the VRT as an institution that repeatedly fails to put its internal affairs in order. The ever-new episodes in the Flemish media, the stories of feuds, jealousy and political contacts make it a drama that few want to miss an episode of.
At the negotiating table, tensions at the VRT are particularly beneficial to the N-VA.
At the negotiating table, those circumstances arise, cynically enough, the N-VA is particularly well served. The party of formateur and future Prime Minister Diependaele has long been an advocate of a public broadcaster with a well-defined task and therefore rather limited ambitions and resources. So the more hassle her ‘confidant’ Delaplace gets into, and the longer his struggle for survival and the associated crisis of authority at the VRT lasts, the more that plays into the hands of those who believe that the VRT must first prove that it is back on its feet. Only later can there possibly be any talk of allocating more resources. At the Flemish negotiating table, that role is played by the N-VA members. The N-VA did not ask for this situation, but is in fact taking advantage of it.
On the other hand, the delegations of Vooruit and CD&V want to create a framework for a stronger VRT. Also financially. It is expected that these two parties will support the VRT’s repeated demand for a higher subsidy at the negotiating table in the coming days. The figure of 5 million euros is being bandied about, but it could just as well be a bit more or less.
In any case, it would be limited to a real, albeit modest increase, given the existing basic endowment of 285 million euros. An equally fixed demand from the VRT is that there is some extra flexibility in determining the ceiling of advertising revenue. Read: that the VRT is allowed to broadcast more advertising than today within well-defined margins and according to predetermined agreements, and therefore also has the prospect of more income. That would immediately compensate for the already limited increase in the endowment. This demand is also expected to be defended by Vooruit and CD&V.
Advertising money
Especially that last demand works like a red rag to a bull for the private media groups, DPG in the lead. They can hardly object to a public broadcaster receiving a large subsidy from the government (as long as it is not ‘too high’, because that would be ‘market-distorting’). But extra advertising revenue, that is crossing a red line.
In the Flemish context, advertising revenues for private broadcasters are still by far the most important source of income. More money for public broadcasters automatically means less money for private media from that perspective. The N-VA fully agrees with that reasoning. Media specialists believe that this contradiction will soon be a thing of the past. The situation is changing rapidly. According to them, the big spenders of Belgian advertising money have long since ceased to be the Belgian media houses, regardless of whether they are public or private, but much larger international players such as Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Elon Musk (X), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) or the Chinese government (TikTok). What would be wrong if the VRT were to appropriate a few extra crumbs from that gigantic pie?
But that offer is under pressure due to the uncertainty surrounding Frederik Delaplace. The N-VA’s appetite is low – not entirely illogical, by the way – to allocate more resources to a broadcaster of which it is uncertain who will manage it in the coming years and with whom the management agreement 2026-2030 will have to be negotiated.
In that sense, Deplace is the right (or wrong) lightning rod at the right (or wrong) moment. There is no need to look for a conspiracy behind it that it came to a new outburst: Delaplace has let too few opportunities pass by to become the object of criticism and dissatisfaction himself. He is clearly less popular with some of the VRT staff than his predecessor Paul Lembrechts.
Procession of (interim) CEOs
For what that’s worth, of course. Lembrechts also had to step down prematurely as CEO in 2010. A similar unfortunate fate had previously befallen Dirk Wauters (in 2009) and Tony Mary (in 2006). Sandra De Preter dropped out prematurely in 2013 due to illness. In the 28 years that BRTN/VRT has existed in its current form since 1996, barely two CEOs – Leo Hellemans (2014-2016) and Bert De Graeve (1996-2002) – have completed their regular term. Hence the considerable series of ‘interim CEOs’: Piet Van Roe twice (in 2006 and 2009-2010), Willy Wijnants (in 2014) and also Leo Hellemans (for a few months in 2020). Each time they were appointed to ‘ensure the continuity of the institution’.
It is not the continuity of the VRT that is the biggest concern now, but rather its very existence.
Today, the main concern is not really the continuity of public broadcasting, but rather its very existence. How and in what state will the VRT survive this ever-expanding series of crises and crisettes survive? How much credit can the public broadcaster count on in the future – literally and figuratively?
