Dutch up in arms over ‘Sesame Street’ channel move

The Dutch are laid back about most things, but every few years a government is given a sharp reminder that messing around with the children's TV programme Sesame Street is very definitely not one of them.

The show has been a fixture of Dutch life since it was first broadcast here in 1976. It marks the point in the evening where parents are home from work and children home from day care – and the closing credits mark the official start of bedtime in millions of homes across the country.

Such a national treasure has the programme become that the Dutch co-production, Sesamstraat, with a slightly different cast of characters, is now the second longest-running foreign adaptation of the American original after Sesamstrasse in Germany.

Now, though, there are plans to move the programme from the mainstream television channel NPO1 – the equivalent of RTÉ 1 – to Zapp Xtra, a much less-popular themed channel for younger viewers, sparking a political row over the government's plans to reform public service broadcasting.

Culture minister Sander Dekker’s aim was to ensure that public broadcasters, subsidised by the taxpayer, could not boost their ratings using “reality” game shows and popular programming more appropriate to their commercial rivals.

Leading the charge, D66 MP Kees Verhoeven, said the minister's "outrageous" decision to "phase out entertainment" on public broadcasters was leading to "all sorts of cultural and educational programmes disappearing".

Socialist MP Jasper van Dijk agreed, pointing out that Sesamstraat had been broadcast "just before bedtime" for just shy of 40 years and should be allowed to stay where it had always been.

“This is an incomprehensible decision by managers in Hilversum (the home of Dutch broadcasting),” he declared. “Dekker needs to ensure it’s reversed.”

The last spat over Sesamstraat was in 2009 over an attempt to change its time slot from 6.30pm to 5.30pm, with the appalling possibility that it might even go to 5pm. That was met by a petition signed by 200,000 parents and children.