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Next Monday, a discussion is planned within the board of directors about how the collaboration between VRT and Streamz came about.
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De Standaard writes this on the basis of mail traffic between the board members of the VRT. In it, a few expressed frustration that they had to hear the news about the entry of VRT to the streaming platform Streamz through the press.
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According to the media decree, the board of directors is responsible for strategic decisions of the public broadcaster. Wasn’t the decision about Streamz a strategic one? Shouldn’t this decision be submitted to the Board? ”Dirk Sterckx (Open VLD) writes in an email to the chairman of the board of directors, Luc Van den Brande (CD&V).
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Sterckx writes in a later email that ‘the council should have approved the cooperation with Streamz in advance. Which has not happened. The council was not even informed. ‘
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Minister of Media, Benjamin Dalle (CD&V), disagrees and made it clear yesterday in the Flemish Parliament when he questioned the cooperation between Streamz and the VRT. “The council should be heard for strategic decisions, not for licensing deals like this one.”
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new CEO
Streamz is the joint streaming platform of the commercial media groups Telenet (Vier) and DPG Media (VTM). It started on Monday 14 September with a range of more than 1,000 titles and a focus on Flemish series.
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The participation of the VRT was long questioned because the previous CEO, Paul Lembrechts, did not consider it a priority for the public broadcaster. At the beginning of September, the new VRT CEO Frederik Delaplace did put his signature on an agreement.
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Nevertheless, VRT’s contribution remains modest overall. The public broadcaster does not participate financially, and the majority of the 1,500 episodes of VRT titles that end up on Streamz, were already in Telenet’s Play catalog behind a paywall. The VRT will offer a few productions, such as the new series ‘Black-out’, first exclusively via Streamz before broadcasting them. It gets a license fee for that,
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