Then try to get them to understand the implications of verzuiling, the ‘system of religious coexistence … designed to give each religious group [in the Netherlands] its proportional representation in politics and culture’, to quote Joseph Buch.

And if your victim seems to have grasped all that, fill them in on the effects of the demise of this legislated pluralism, the onslaught of the commercial stations and finally the statistical fact that less and less viewers are tuning in to the public service. By way of proof, the TV and Radio Audience Research Service recently reported that in the top hundred most-viewed programmes, the first public broadcasting organization managed to get no higher than number thirty-two.
You don’t have to be a genius to see that this entire system is on its last legs. What can we still call public, what still needs broadcasting, who wants to be compartmentalized these days?

The irony is that broadcasting organizations that were formerly regarded as free-thinking and renegade, now seem to be coming off best. The more common-denominator oriented companies like the TROS and the AVRO are being beaten at their own game: what they once did, the commercial stations now do much better. But former sectarian organizations such as the holy-rolling EO and the free-thinking/iconoclastic VPRO are doing very nicely thank you, and clearly fill a gap in the media landscape. It has suddenly become clear once again that a public service works best for those organizations which concentrate on matters that don’t lend themselves to exploitation: substance (or faith), out-and-out lunacy and enthusiasm.

This situation opens up intriguing prospects for architects. On the one hand, we see the consequences of clustering the former compartments, with a corresponding need for collective buildings. On the other, the free-thinkers can do their thing in premises entirely suited to their needs. In both cases the issue is one of identity. And then of course there is still the architecture of the competitor: commercial TV, which is only too easily satisfied by off-the-shelf accommodation. Archis, true to form, tells it like it is.