The Netherlands – (E5) Affordable public and private news media

Print media

The E5 indicator checks the extent to which the Dutch news media are within the financial means of an average household. To this end, the same comparison is made as in the 2006 monitor: the price for an annual subscription to three newspapers (De Telegraaf, de Volkskrant and De Gelderlander) is compared with that of similar papers in three neighboring countries with similar disposable incomes. We can thus determine whether the affordability of Dutch newspapers has changed since 2006.

Table 1. Price comparison newspapers

Sources: Newspaper websites. NA = not available.

The prices above (Table 1) are those for an annual subscription in 2010; a subscription to an online newspaper does not usually exceed half of the price for a home-delivered paper version (about €150). one conclusion is that the Dutch quality paper de Volkskrant, or at least a subscription to it, is cheaper than the three quality papers in the neighboring countries. The same applies to the popular paper De Telegraaf. only the regional paper, De Gelderlander, is relatively expensive. on the whole, quality papers tend to be higher priced than popular ones, probably because publishers assume that the readers of quality papers are willing to pay a higher price. All the papers listed in Table 2 offer different kinds of subscriptions. A common characteristic of them all is the degree of flexibility: today, subscriptions to the week-end edition tend to be the rule rather than the exception. Clearly, news consumers can choose the subscription that best fits their budget.

Television, radio and online platforms? In 2009 a digital basic package on the cable cost, on average, €0.28 per channel; with an average of 61 channels in a package this amounts to a monthly sum of over €17 (nlkabel.nl 2010). The Netherlands also has several (wireless) Internet providers: the price of an Internet connection varies from €15 to €60 per month, dependent on the period one wishes to be connected and various extra options (among which is speed of the connection). There is, furthermore, the ability to combine an Internet subscription with a television and a telephone connection (triple pay). Prices for such a combination fluctuate between €20 and €80 per month (internetabonnement, 2010). In other words, determining the yearly overall media cost for a Dutch household, given the variation in subscription offers and the TV license fee being paid through taxes, is not a simple task: about 1,500 euros may be a good estimate (leaving out costs for mobile platforms, depending on use and household size). For the sake of comparison: the average disposable income of the over 7 million Dutch households in 2008 was €33,500 per year (CBS 2009).