Het Parool - Termination and Restart

Termination and Restart

In the 1990s Het Parool became a lossmaking newspaper, mainly due to stiff competition and lack of investment by PCM. Several programs, including a move away from national newspaper towards local Amsterdam newspaper in 1997 to counter this, had little result. In 2002 PCM announced termination of the paper, citing substantial losses and declining readership PCM.

Instead majority shareholder Stichting Het Parool opted for a management bail out of the newspaper, in effect terminating its ownership of PCM in return for the rights to publish Het Parool. The bail out took effect on January 1, 2003. PCM was subsequently acquired by British based investment group Apax Partners, which lead to substantial debts and significant problems for the company.

To strengthen ownership base of fledgeling Het Parool, De Persgroep, the biggest newspaper publisher of Belgium, was asked to take a substantial minorityshare in the newly set-up Het Parool bv alongside minority participations by both staff and readers. As a stand-alone newspaper, Het Parool decided to remain a national newspaper, but with an enhanced focus on its Amsterdam homebase.

In the new configuration and after a collective layoff of 43 staff, Het Parool returned to profit within a year. March 30, 2003 Het Parool became the first newspaper in the Netherlands to switch from broadsheet broadsheet to tabloid tabloid format, a move which since has been followed by all other major and local newspapers in the country, with the exception of De Telegraaf. In a declining market Het Parool was one of the few daily newspapers in The Netherlands able to expand it's readership every year until 2011 and remaining profitable ever since it's bailout.

For Belgium-based De Persgroep, Het Parool served as a foothold in the Netherlands, leading to the acquisition of a majority in struggling PCM in 2009. In 2011, Het Parool was re-absorbed in PCM, which was renamed Persgroep Nederland. Management of the company was taken over by former Parool management, basically re-establishing the Perscombinatie-situation in the seventies.

Between 2001 and 2011 Het Parool operated its own theatre (Het Parooltheater) as a place for debate and culture.

In February 2012 Het Parool acquired Amsterdam based commercial television station AT5 with public broadcaster AVRO and regional TV-station RTV Noord-Holland to form a new multimedia corporation, which will also include online activities of both Parool and AT5, within De Persgroep.