Belgium is not just divided politically, its media landscape is also divided: the two regions Flanders and Wallonia each have their own media in their own language, as well as their own media culture.
Belgium: the power of the Big Five
The Flemish media landscape is dominated by the “Big Five”, as the media regulation authorities have dubbed the region’s five key players. The three media groups Het Mediahuis, DPG Media and Roularta hold sway in the print segment while Vijver Media (a subsidiary of telecoms group Telenet) and the Flemish public broadcaster VRT dominate the audiovisual segment. All the major Flemish newspapers are effectively owned by just two groups: Het Mediahuis (De Standaard, Gazet van Antwerpen and other papers) and DPG Media (TV channel VTM, Het Laatste Nieuws, De Morgen and other outlets). Both publishing groups also hold more than 90 percent of the newspaper market in neighbouring country the Netherlands (NRC and De Telegraaf belong to the Mediahuis Group, De Volkskrant belongs to DPG).
Wallonia has a similar concentration of media ownership. The market leader in the French-speaking part of the country is the Rossel Group (Le Soir and other papers). The IPM Group (La Libre Belgique, La Dernière Heure) consolidated its second place in 2021 with its purchase of the regional newspapers of media group L'Avenir in 2020. In 2021, Rossel and DPG Media took over RTL Belgium, Wallonia’s leading commercial broadcaster, along with its TV channels. This move not only strengthened their position in the audiovisual segment, but in the case of DPG it also created a strong new pillar in the south of the country.
As regards Belgium’s German-speaking minority, apart from the Belgian public broadcasting service the only daily newspaper targeting this readership is Grenz-Echo, which is published in Eupen, the capital city of Belgium’s German-speaking community.
Newspapers remain in Belgian hands
Media concentration has at least stabilised the newspaper segment. The survival of the country’s newspapers – and in Belgian hands, at that – seems to be assured for the time being. The major publishers have restructured, reorganised and, above all, invested in online services. Thanks to online subscriptions, the circulation of the three leading Flemish newspapers (De Tijd, De Standaard and De Morgen) is actually rising. The big publishers are also making substantial profits through their international investments, but the regional and local media are struggling.
Less diverse content as a synergy effect?
There is concern that the concentration of ownership is having a negative impact on the diversity of content and promoting uniformity. The big publishers are increasingly sharing content among their outlets, and not just within the national borders. Het Mediahuis, for example, uses the foreign correspondent network of its Dutch newspapers (NRC Handelsblad) for its Flemish daily newspaper De Standaard. And DPG Media swaps content from the Dutch daily De Volkskrant with De Morgen.
The DPG Media Group, which claims to reach eight out of ten Flemish citizens through its outlets, recently merged the newsroom of tabloid Het Laatste Nieuws with that of its TV channel VTM, explaining that this enables faster and more targeted distribution of content. VTM's news website disappeared in the process, however.
According to the media regulation authorities, the larger national newspapers are benefiting from the synergy effects, and DPG and Mediahuis have also succeeded in creating a strong united front against the financial clout of Google and Facebook on the advertising market. At the same time, media concentration poses a threat to smaller and regional media, which have lost much of their individual identity in recent years and have had to discontinue local editions.
World Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders):
Rank 23 (2022)
Last updated: April 2023
