Final Report Editor Ulrike Felt June 2003

Belgian overview 519
2.2. Science in the media
The situation described in the state of the art in 1995 (§1) can be understood as a “the
hollow of the wave”, because there has been a significant comeback of science in the
media during the last few years. This is evident in the press as well as on TV. Current
events such as the GMO controversy, the dioxin crisis in spring 1999, the ESB crisis,
etc., also contributed to an increase in the supply and demand of scientific information
for the public.
2.2.1. Science at the TV
The French-speaking public service television channel RTBF, decided in 1998 to
resume a 52-minute monthly science programme, entitled “Matière grise” (Grey
matter), broadcasted on Thursday evening around 21:30 on RTBF1. This initiative was
positively acknowledged, since RTBF was often criticised for having left scientific
culture off its programming schedule. The first season’s audience ratings were
considered a success by RTBF’s management. The new programme also enabled the
enhancement of the team of scientific journalists and correspondents and the
production of more frequent notices to be included in radio and TV news.
On RTBF’s web site there is an extended section on “science and technology”,
coordinated by a science journalist. This web page contains all the texts of the notices
written by science journalists for any radio or TV news; most of the notices are linked
with a longer on-line article, containing references and links with other web sites. The
coordinator of these web pages intends to develop a real “on-line science journal”, as
an aspect of the RTBF policy to implement on-line information services.
RTBF also broadcasts the French series “C’est pas sorcier”, which has been produced
by France3 since the autumn of 2000. Sequences of “C’est pas sorcier” are integrated
once a week in the children’s programmes “Ici Blabla”, during the children evening
prime time.
Apart from these new initiatives cited above, RTBF, continues “Pulsations”, with a
monthly TV-broadcast on health, “Cyber-café”, a weekly TV-broadcast which is
simultaneously broadcasted on Saturday night on RTBF2 and on the Internet (together
with an on-line forum), and “Multimedia” a daily radio notice, broadcast at 8:40 a.m. on
the first radio channel.
The concurrent private TV-chain RTL-TVi also introduced a new weekly science
programme, entitled “Tout s’explique” (All can be explained) in 1999, co-produced with
the French channel M6. It is a 20 minutes programme, broadcasted each Thursday at
evening prime time (19:35).
As 95% of the households are connected to cable-TV and the audience of French
channels is very high in Belgium, the French-speaking TV-viewers now have access to
a wide range of scientific programmes from RTBF, RTL-TVi, FR2, FR3, TF1 and TV5