1. Introduction

This publication on the satellite account for culture and media was commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and compiled by Statistics Netherlands (CBS). The satellite account for culture and media describes the contribution of culture and media to the Dutch economy on the basis of major macroeconomic indicators, such as GDP, imports and exports and consumer expenditure. The third edition of this publication includes the results for 2015, 2018 and 2022, with a particular focus on the 2022 reporting year.

A satellite account is a supplement to the national accounts and describes one particular aspect of the economy. Importantly, the results are fully consistent with the results of the national accounts. This means that wherever possible the satellite account adopts the methods, concepts and definitions that are used in the national accounts. The results of the satellite account can thus be compared directly with the wider economy as recorded in the national accounts.

Besides description of the macroeconomic indicators for culture and media, this publication also focuses on industries, goods and services. The central question is which goods, services and industries are of greater or lesser economic importance within the culture and media sector. The goods and services that fall under culture and media are also categorised into domains. This division into domains is more in line with common practice than the standard classification of goods, services and industries used in the national accounts. Examples of domains include Literature, Performing Arts and Heritage¹⁾.

What is culture and media?

When compiling a satellite account for culture and media, we must first establish what counts as culture and media. This satellite account defines culture and media in terms of goods and services, according to the Classification of Products by Activity (CPA)²⁾.In the first instance this relates to the primary cultural and media products, roughly in line with the definitions of the EU (ESSnet-Culture) and UNESCO. At the core of this definition are the attributes of (artistic) creation, cultural expression and the management and conservation of heritage. CBS has formulated a set of additional guidelines of to which extent the satellite account should include supporting goods and services for the cultural and media product production and distribution chain. There is less similarity between the approaches of the EU and UNESCO on this point. The guidelines formulated by CBS are worded as follows:

Cultural and media products include not only all primary cultural and media products themselves (based on the values of ‘creation’ and ‘cultural expression’), but also those goods and services which would not exist without these primary cultural and media products.

Some examples of primary cultural and media products are museum and library services, books, architectural services, advertisements, radio and television programmes, theatre productions, online games and photography. Examples of supporting cultural and media products include musical instruments, cameras, radios and television sets and machines for binding and printing books. That being the case, in this satellite account, culture and media include not only traditional culture (museums, libraries, performing arts, etc.) but also the media (radio, TV, newspapers and periodicals, etc.) and large sections of the creative industry (architecture, design, advertising, etc.).

Finally, some goods and services have been included which are not really cultural or media products in themselves but which are inextricably linked to culture and media, such as shops and cafés in museums and investments in museum buildings.

Appendix 1 provides details about goods and services which are counted as culture and media, including the complete list of these goods and services as well as domains and subdomains to which they belong.

Changes from the previous edition

The first satellite account for culture and media was compiled in 2019 and provided results for 2015. The second edition was released in 2021 with results for 2015 and 2018, as well as a more detailed classification of the industries and domains³⁾. The second edition also incorporated the revised results of the national accounts for the year 2015. This, the third edition, presents results that incorporate the 2021 revision of the national accounts. This applies to all the figures for 2015, 2018 and 2022 that are covered in this edition. The creation of sequentially comparable time series was a particular challenge in this edition. This was due to the significant adjustments in the relevant sectors and product groups in the revision year 2021. This challenge was compounded by the lack of detailed data in the historical time series as these were made available in the national accounts. Therefore caution is advised when using the time series data presented in this publication.

Reading guide

Chapter 2 describes how culture and media contribute to key macroeconomic indicators of the Dutch economy. Chapter 3 provides more details about the culture and media sector and describes the most important cultural and media products and the relevant industries. This chapter also describes the main economic variables and characteristics of each domain and subdomain. Chapter 4 deals with government expenditure on culture and media, and in Chapter 5 the results of this satellite account for culture and media are compared with similar work in other countries.

More detailed explanations of what counts as culture and media and how a satellite account is created can be found in Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 respectively.

Finally, the detailed tables containing almost all the underlying figures on which this report is based are also attached.