The
National Institute of Radio Broadcasting (; ), the state-owned broadcasting organisation was established by law on 18 June 1930, and from 1938 was housed in the
Flagey Building, also known as the
Radio House, a purpose-built building in the
"paquebot" style of
Art Deco architecture. 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 ''''. A number of INR personnel were able to relocate to the
BBC's studios in London from where they broadcast as
/ under the '''' (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 merged the two and restored the INR's original mission. The INR was one of 23 broadcasting organisations that founded the
European Broadcasting Union in 1950. Television broadcasting from Brussels began in 1953, with two hours of programming each day. Split along linguistic lines in 1960, the INR's French-language programming became RTB ('''') and moved to new quarters at the Reyers building in 1967. The RTB's first broadcast in colour, '''' (a gardening and nature programme), was transmitted in 1971. Two years later, the RTB began broadcasting
news in colour. In 1977, broadcasting became a concern for Belgium's
language communities, rather than the national government as a whole. Accordingly, the French-language section of the RTB became the RTBF ('''') and a second television channel was set up with the name . In 1979 became . Along with French channels , , and Swiss channel
TSR, the RTBF jointly established the European French-speaking channel in 1984. On 21 March 1988, became . The change was made because of the growing importance of new media; the ".be" suffix stressed those new developments. On 11 June 2013, the RTBF was one of the few European public broadcasters to join in condemning the closure of
Greece's public broadcaster,
ERT. By 2011, the analogue systems for RTBF.be were planned to be phased out for
Wallonia.
Bye Bye Belgium On 13 December 2006, at 20:21
CET (19:21
UTC), the RTBF replaced an edition of its regular current affairs programme '''' with a
fake special news report in which it was claimed that
Flanders had proclaimed independence, effectively dissolving the Belgian state. The programme had been preceded by a caption reading "This may not be fiction", which was repeated intermittently as a subtitle to the images on the screen. After the first half-hour of the 90-minute broadcast, however – by which point RTBF.be's response line had been flooded with calls – this was replaced with a caption reading "This is fiction". The video featured images of news reporters standing in front of the
Flemish Parliament, while Flemish separatists waved the
flag of Flanders behind them. Off to the side, Francophone and Belgian nationalists were waving Belgian flags. The report also featured footage of
King Albert and
Queen Paola getting on a military jet to
Congo, a former Belgian colony. The RTBF justified the hoax on the grounds that it raised the issue of
Flemish nationalism, but others felt that it raised the issue of how much the public can trust the press.
Controversies In September 2024,
French Community of Belgium Minister of Media
Jacqueline Galant criticized RTBF for airing a segment titled "How to be less racist?", which in her opinion was biased and lacked pluralism. Galant was in turn criticized by the
European Federation of Journalists for alleged editorial interference. RTBF notably caused controversy in January 2025 by delaying the broadcast of Donald Trump's
second inaugural speech by two minutes, in order to prevent the live broadcast of statements inciting hatred. The decision was condemned as
censorship by
Reformist Movement party leader
Georges-Louis Bouchez and prompted an investigation from Galant. ==Logo history==