PCGG (also known as the Dutch Concerts station) was a radio station located at The Hague in the Netherlands, which began broadcasting a regular schedule of entertainment programmes on 6 November 1919. The station was established by engineer Hanso Idzerda, and is believed to have been Europe's first sustained broadcasting station, as well as one of the first stations in the world to transmit entertainment intended for a general audience. PCGG's schedule generally featured one or two evening programmes per week. Although located on the west coast of Holland, the station had a large audience across the English Channel in Great Britain. However, Idzerda ran into financial difficulties, and PCGG's licence was revoked on 11 November 1924, one month before his company, Nederlandsche Radio-Industrie, shut down due to bankruptcy. History Formation Hans Idzerda was an electrical engineer, who worked with the Philips manufacturing company during World War I. (Holland was a neutral country during this conflict, and largely avoided the immense destruction caused by the war.) Idzerda founded his own company, which became known as Nederlandsche Radio-Industrie by the end of the war. Together with Philips, he developed the Philips-Iduret-Generatorlamp radio tube. An agreement with Philips gave Idzerda the exclusive right to sell tubes to the general public and amateur radio enthusiasts. His quota was to sell at least 180 a year, and in the first year achieved 1,200 sales. In order to promote sales, Idzerda began a series of demonstration transmissions, the first of which was made during the Third Dutch Trade Fair held in Utrecht from February 24 to March 8, 1919. While most audio radio transmissions at this time employed AM (amplitude modulation) signals, Idzerda patented a method for "narrow-band" FM (frequency modulation) transmissions. (This is in contrast to the modern day "wide band" FM, originally developed in the 1930s by Edwin Howard Armstrong.) This could be picked up by standard receivers, although they had to be slightly deturned in order to receive the signals using slope detection. On 11 June 1919 Idzerda was granted permission to operate a radio station, although the permit technically limited him to communication with designated military radio stations. The new station was issued the randomly assigned call sign of PCGG. Adopting a generous interpretation of the activities allowed by his station authorization, on 6 November he embarked on a weekly series of entertainment broadcasts. The schedule for the first programme was