PCGG

Press advertisement for station PCGG's first broadcast

PCGG was the call sign of a privately owned Dutch radio station which was on air from 6 November 1919 until 11 November 1924. Broadcast from the home of its owner, the engineer Hanso Schotanus à Steringa Idzerda, in The Hague, the station is accounted one of the world's oldest radio stations and arguably the first commercial broadcaster.

Idzerda was granted his broadcasting licence, which officially limited him to making experimental radio communications between The Hague and Eindhoven, on 14 August 1919. On 6 November he initiated the first official broadcast of his show "Radio Soirée-musicale", the details of which were advertised in a local newspaper. The main goal of his earliest broadcasts was to sell the radio receiver equipment produced by his company, NV Nederlandsche Radioindustrie. It is believed that the microphone and transmitter set-up employed by Idzerda would have been the same or similar to those used in the technique he patented on 24 February 1924.

From 1919 to 1924 the station made regular evening broadcasts several times a week. Because of the popularity of his broadcasts, proved by the amount of listener correspondence, he managed to secure sponsorship, some from as far afield as the United Kingdom. Idzerda's licence was revoked on 11 November 1924 after he got into financial difficulties and his company was declared bankrupt a month later.

External links

• Hanso Schotanus à Steringa Idzerda Biography of Idzerda. (In Dutch)

See also

• History of radio
• List of the world's oldest radio stations
• Timeline of radio