The Netherlands had its first TV broadcast 75 years ago - DutchNews.nl
The Royal Family watched the 90-minute debut, and the country had about 500 television sets as radio still dominated homes.
- The Netherlands commemorates the television anniversary today, airing a 90-minute performance of the play Toverspiegel, live from a studio in Bussum, which The Royal Family watched from Soestdijk Palace.
- Reconstruction priorities and societal concerns delayed the Netherlands' entry into the television era, making it later than the United Kingdom, where The BBC had begun broadcasting in 1936.
- Radio remained the dominant medium with around 250,000 devices in homes, while a television set cost 785 guilders—about a third of average annual salary—putting the luxury far out of reach for most.
- Media historian Huub Wijfjes told the NOS that early television broadcasts merely copied radio formats, though the medium eventually displaced radio and reached peak popularity in the 1960s through 1980s.
- Early broadcasts are now preserved and available for viewing through the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, maintaining the historical records of the nation's television journey.
10 Articles
10 Articles
We can now look back on no less than three-quarters of a century of Dutch television. Yet the platform has not had an easy time in recent years. With declining viewership, the influence of television seems to be slowly diminishing.
Thousands of people stood in front of radio shop windows or watched in a café, and the Royal Family watched from Soestdijk Palace: the first television broadcast in the Netherlands was 75 years ago today. In 1951, there were only about 500 television sets in the country, and the influence the medium would have could not yet be estimated. The radio was where it was all happening. That first broadcast lasted an hour and a half. Everything was liv…
Telegraph engineer F.C. Wamberg told Ingeniøren about the promising experiments with television – a job that requires mastery of several branches of engineering.
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