EARLY COMMERCIAL DAYS

Many countries claim to have been involved in the early days of broadcasting. In the Netherlands, historical records show that an early Dutch radio pioneer, Hanso Schotanus à Steringa Idzerda, was perhaps the first in the world to broadcast programmes on a fixed schedule. Experiments elsewhere had been on a purely ad-hoc basis. On 5 November 1919, Idzerda put an advertisement in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (a Dutch newspaper that did not survive on its own and ultimately became part of a larger newspaper, NRC Handelsblad) that advertised a broadcast the following evening. At 8 pm on Thursday, 6 November, he broadcast a programme from his home in The Hague using an am transmitter. From the outset, his broadcasts were commercial, advertising his own brand of radios. He also had a ‘sponsorship’ deal with the Daily Mail newspaper in London, since the signal was clearly propagating across the North Sea. However, early appeals for listeners to send in money to allow expansion were not enough to balance the books, and Holland's first broadcaster filed for bankruptcy in 1925.

Recognising the success, other broadcasters emerged in the 1920s. In Hilversum, a maritime equipment manufacturer branched out into making consumer radios. In July 1923, the Netherlands Wireless Broadcasting Company was established, later renamed AVRO.

At that time Dutch society was very clearly divided into various groups, separated by religious or political convictions (one could speak of segmented pluralism or pillarisation as documented by the work of the Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart). Each sector in society quickly saw radio as a way not only to reach its own group, but also to persuade others that their beliefs were the way forward.

In late 1924, Abraham van der Deure set up a foundation to broadcast programmes of a ‘protestant religious’ character. The Nederlandsche Christelijke Radio Vereeniging (NCRV) hired airtime for a few nights a week on a transmitter in Hilversum. A year later, they were joined by the Catholics, with the foundation of the Katholieke Radio Omroep (KRO) by Father Lambertus Hendricus Perquin. The Catholics also hired airtime, but on different evenings.