RTBF - History

History

Originally named INR – Institut national belge de radiodiffusion (Dutch: NIR – Belgisch Nationaal Instituut voor de Radio-omroep), the state-owned broadcasting organization was established by law on 18 June 1930. On 14 June 1940 the INR was forced to cease broadcasting as a result of the German invasion. The German occupying forces, who now oversaw its management, changed the INR's name to Radio Bruxelles. A number of INR personnel were able to relocate to the BBC's studios in London from where they broadcast as Radio Belgique / Radio België under the Office de Radiodiffusion Nationale Belge (RNB) established by the Belgian government-in-exile's Ministry of Information.

At the end of the war the INR and the RNB coexisted until 14 September 1945, when a Royal Decree restored the INR's original mission. The INR was one of 23 broadcasting organizations which founded the European Broadcasting Union in 1950. Television broadcasting from Brussels began in 1953, with two hours of programming each day. In 1960 the INR was subsumed into RTB (Radio-Télévision Belge) and moved to new quarters at the Reyers building in 1967. RTB's first broadcast in colour, Le Jardin Extraordinaire (a gardening and nature programme), was transmitted in 1971. Two years later the RTB began broadcasting news in colour.

In 1977, following Belgian federalization and the establishment of separate language communities, the French-language section of RTB became RTBF (Radio-Télévision Belge de la Communauté française) and a second television channel was set up with the name RTbis. In 1979 RTbis became "Télé 2". Along with French channels TF1, Antenne 2, FR 3 and Swiss channel SSR, RTBF jointly established the European French-speaking channel TV5 in 1984. On 21 March 1988 Télé 2 became Télé 21. On 27 September 1989 a subsidiary company of RTBF was set up with the name Canal Plus TVCF, which subsequently became "Canal Plus Belgique" in May 1995. In 1993 Télé 21 was replaced by Arte/21 and Sport 21.

In mid January 2010, RTBF became RTBF.be. The change was made because of the growing importance of new media. The '.be' suffix stresses these new developments. RTBF.be underlines that this change isn't anecdotic and that the internet has gained its place in the media landscape, just as TV and radio have done years ago.