Thanks tjpeople and Richiepiep.
I still read more than I post but I'm here quite often.
@Richiepiep: since you're Dutch too, did you saw the huge announcement for Breaking Bad in the Algemeen Dagblad a few weeks ago? I was so excited they were going to air it here and then they pulled it from the programming again.. :s
I guess this must have been SBS6, which was rumoured to start airing the show? (no, the article you scanned shows it was supposed to be RTL7, but I've also read about SBS6). These announcements, especially on commercial channels, can be so random and frustrating sometimes ... They sometimes schedule a pilot, or a season, and then, probably because of disappointing audiences or other priorities, quickly take them off the air.
Anyway, I'm so glad we have it on VPRO as of Jan. 1, 2012, that is public broadcasting now wihout any commercials and stuff, but it's a bit late now, and loads of fans will have seen it as downloads, streams or on DVD.
But first and foremost, I'm really excited they decided to put it on after more than two years of campaining on my part, and I guess there will have been others promoting it too, especially after all the Emmies they received.
I sent them a mail back in August 2009, but the programmers replied that they thought the target group was too small, and they had no room for it, because they already had
Dexter on,
Nip and Tuck and
Mad Men. Later on, they suspected, like me, that lots of fans had already seen part of the series one way or another, and this is of course the dilemma with programming on standard TV channels nowadays: there are so many other ways of viewing it, legal or illegal.
Breaking Bad is getting somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 viewers in the Netherlands now, which sounds small, but puts it in the same league as
Dexter and
Mad Men, quality drama series with limited audiences, partly because of late-night programming on week days I guess. Of course, these numbers don't count the numbers of postponed DVR and online viewers, so it's probably a lot more in total.
Rich