The Last Yet Also the First Creative Act in Television?

A television channel's identity is shaped by its output: not just the relative share of different programme genres but equally so the relative position programmes take up in the schedule. This paper refutes the notion that the development of scheduling strategies and tactics – to make the programme schedules as interesting as possible for viewers – are a product of a commercial and competitive television environment. It will be demonstrated that, from its inception, public service television paid considerable attention to the way in which the actual programme schedules could help establish its cultural–educational broadcasting goals. Taking Flemish public service television between 1953 and 1974 as a case in point, the paper analyses how, first, European public service broadcasting (PSB) created its own annual, seasonal, weekly and daily rhythm and, second, how contemporary scheduling strategies and tactics (compatibility, hammocking, etc.) can be identified in the monopolistic past, albeit interpreted along historically dominant PSB policy objectives.