Eddie Groenwals

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Eddie Groenwals

Who is Eddie Groenwals?

With a career spanning more than 40 years in journalism, Eddie Groenwals has seen many evolutions in the media world. He began his career in sports editorial at radio and TV at VRT. At the end of 1988, he transferred to VTM to help shape the commercial television channel. After 14 years as a sports reporter, he retrained as a specialist in domestic politics. In 2000, he returned to public broadcasting to become editor-in-chief and producer of various commentary programs such as Terzake and De zevende dag on television or De Ochtend and De Wereld Vandaag on radio. Still, field work did not leave him either and he continued to do news reporting in various fields. 

So Eddie is at home in many fields and especially has a broad view on audiovisual media in general. 

Listen to Eddie Groenwals in our podcast Overmorgen. 

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    35 years of (r)evolution in radio and TV news

    70 years ago, on October 31, 1953 to be exact, television began in Flanders. That first evening there was also a kind of TV newsreel, under the name Panorama, in which the current events of the past week were summarized. For 35 years the then BRT had the monopoly on radio and TV journalism. The news broadcasts were labeled as solid and reliable, but as time went on also somewhat boring and elitist.

    By contrast, the second half of that TV era saw an awful lot of change, both in the media landscape, technical advances and journalistic approaches. Eddie lived through all those (r)evolutions. Starting out in1980 at public broadcasting, in 1988 he transferred to the then still-to-be-founded commercial channel VTM, first as a sports journalist, then as a general reporter, both reporter and compiler. He experienced competition from both sides, as well as changes such as the increasing importance of online and innovations such as the rise and impact of new media.

    Eddie has since concluded that career and can now testify about it with some distance. What has changed during that period? How has journalism itself evolved thanks to or in spite of those innovations? Eddie has his own take on it, peppered with anecdotes, but also with a panoramic view, critical questions and quirky answers.