NIROM (Nederlands-Indische Radio-Omroep-Maatschappij; historically also spelled Nederlandsch-Indische Radio Omroep Maatschappij) was a radio broadcasting company in the Dutch East Indies. It operated regular broadcasts in the colony from 1934 until the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies in 1942. NIROM was distinct from Philips Omroep Holland-Indië (PHOHI), which transmitted short-wave programmes from the Netherlands to the Indies; NIROM provided a broadcasting system within the archipelago itself.
NIROM was incorporated in Amsterdam in December 1928 with capital from Radio-Holland, the Philips group and Maintz & Co. Its broadcasting concession made it the official colonial broadcaster, but it operated in a wider field that included European listener associations, religious broadcasters and ketimuran or “Eastern” radio societies.
Background
Legal radio broadcasting in the Dutch East Indies began before NIROM. In 1925, the Batavia Radio Vereeniging began Dutch-language broadcasts from the Hotel des Indes in Batavia. Early broadcasting was local and association-based, with operating expenses covered by members of listener societies.
By the early 1930s, radio in the colony included European listener associations, Christian broadcasting initiatives and Indonesian cultural broadcasters. The Solosche Radio Vereeniging, founded in Solo in 1933 after court-based broadcasts from a kraton, became an important outlet for live gamelan and other Javanese cultural performance.
Radio policy in the Dutch East Indies developed alongside Dutch intercontinental broadcasting. PHOHI, established with Philips capital, transmitted from the Netherlands to the Indies, while NIROM was intended to develop broadcasting within the colony. Dutch advocates of imperial radio treated shortwave broadcasting as a way to maintain cultural and political links between the Netherlands and the Indies and to compete with foreign stations audible in the colony.
Establishment and regulation
NIROM was incorporated in Amsterdam in December 1928. communications, Philips in radio technology and overseas broadcasting, and Maintz & Co. in colonial electricity and trading enterprises.
A proposal from NIROM was debated in the Volksraad in 1930, and the colonial government granted the company a ten-year concession in 1933. Private radio societies were allowed to remain on the air, but NIROM received official status and access to the licence-fee system. The colonial Post, Telegraph and Telephone Service collected radio fees and owned transmitting stations, while advisory structures supervised programming.
The concession required NIROM to take account of listeners' wishes, but also prohibited broadcasts that conflicted with the interests of the state, the law, public order or morality. Spoken programming was therefore more closely supervised than music. The authorities and NIROM's advisory bodies were concerned about party propaganda, religious conflict and political mobilization, especially in broadcasts aimed at non-European audiences.
Karel Willem Leonard Bezemer served as General Director for Broadcasting at NIROM during the early period of regular broadcasting. He wrote in 1934 on the practical need for gramophone records in radio programming, especially for European classical repertory that could not easily be performed live in the Indies. He became later known as a Dutch maritime historian and writer on the Royal Netherlands Navy and merchant shipping during the Second World War.
Advisory council
NIROM's Raad van Advies ("Advisory Council") was installed in April 1934 as an advisory and supervisory body for the broadcaster. It was intended to mediate between NIROM and radio owners in the Dutch East Indies and to help ensure that broadcasts did not endanger public order.
An early official listing gave the council's chair as M. van Loon and its members as Ir. W. Baron van Slingelandt, K.W.L. Bezemer, Mr C.C. van Helsdingen, Mr G.A. Lamsvelt, C.J.M. van der Linden, J.G. Prins, E.W. Schultz and R.A.A. Wiranata Koesoema, with C.W.L. Schell as secretary. The composition later changed. C. Hillen, director of the Indies PTT, became an influential appointed chair of the council, and in 1939 he was succeeded as chair by D.R.K. de Boer while remaining attached to NIROM as government representative.
The council did not constitute a representative sample of all NIROM listeners. Its members were Java-based Dutch men from the upper-middle class or higher and were generally linked to institutions with an interest in broadcasting. The council included representatives of Dutch radio and cultural organizations, Christian broadcasting interests, and, initially, one representative of indigenous listeners, R.A.A. Wiranata Koesoema, the regent of Bandung and a member of the Volksraad. After the 1936 elections, the “Eastern” representation was enlarged with a Javanese representative of the Solosche Radio Vereeniging and a Chinese radio amateur connected with several non-Western radio clubs in Java.
Transmitters and coverage
NIROM's technical system combined long-distance archipelzenders ("achipelago transmitters") with smaller regional and local transmitters. The problem was geographical: the Dutch East Indies was a dispersed island colony in which ordinary local broadcasting could not provide colony-wide coverage. After the concession was granted, regular broadcasting was delayed while antenna parks and transmission facilities were built.
By 1937, NIROM's network covered the archipelago. A NIROM leaflet from 1939 described a network of 27 transmitters: five high-power archipelago transmitters and fourteen local transmitters for the Western programme, and one archipelago transmitter and seven local transmitters for the Eastern programme. The same leaflet stated that the Western programme was distributed from Batavia over telephone lines to nineteen transmitters, while the Eastern programme was divided between sections fed from Soerabaja and from Batavia or Bandoeng. These sections could be coupled, creating a larger combined distribution network.
NIROM's 1939 technical description distinguished between long-distance transmitters using wavelengths below 100 metres and regional or local stations using wavelengths between 100 and 200 metres. It also described directional transmission for areas such as Sumatra, Borneo and Celebes. By the end of Dutch colonial rule, NIROM had studios in Batavia, Bandoeng, Soerabaja, Semarang and Medan, with relay stations in Solo, Yogyakarta, Cepu, Malang, Sukabumi, Cirebon, Buitenzorg and Padang.
Programming and audiences
NIROM's service was divided into a Western programme and an Eastern programme. The division reflected the growth of non-European radio listening and demands for more programming addressed to listeners categorized as “Eastern”. From September 1934, NIROM used separate frequencies for the two services, allowing different programmes to be transmitted at the same time. The arrangement also responded to complaints from Western listeners about hearing Eastern music, especially gamelan, through or behind Western broadcasts.
The Indonesian/Malay term ketimuran, from timur (“east”), corresponded to the Dutch colonial term Oostersch. In the radio context it did not mean only Indonesian-language or nationalist Indonesian broadcasting. It referred to a broad colonial category of non-Western audiences and cultural forms, including indigenous Indonesian, Malay, Chinese, Arab and Eurasian listeners and repertories.
The political argument for Eastern broadcasting became more explicit in the later conflict over the Perikatan Perkoempoelan Radio Ketimoeran (PPRK). In 1938, Sutardjo Kertohadikusumo defended Eastern radio in the Volksraad through an appeal later rendered in scholarship as “Let us become radio mechanics”. PPRK argued that Eastern broadcasting should be organized by Eastern broadcasters themselves, and in 1940 it took over NIROM's Eastern programming while continuing to use NIROM transmitters.
The separation of Western and Eastern programming did not produce wholly separate audiences. Common broadcasts were used for official occasions such as New Year ceremonies, royal birthdays and the opening of the parliamentary year, sometimes with translations into Malay and other languages. Musical categories also crossed the official distinction between Western and Eastern listeners.
Radio ownership was limited by the cost of receivers, licence fees and uneven access to electricity. In 1939 there were 87,510 radio licence holders in the Netherlands East Indies, including 25,608 Indonesians. In 1940, official figures counted about 50,000 receiving sets among Europeans, 20,000 among people categorized as Chinese and Arab, and 32,000 among indigenous Indonesians.
Music and gramophone records
Music dominated NIROM's programming. In October 1936, music accounted for more than 70 per cent of radio programmes and about 83 per cent of programming hours in the material analysed from Soeara NIROM. By January 1942, when wartime news occupied more airtime, music still accounted for about 44 per cent of programmes and 69 per cent of broadcasting hours.
A strong reliance on gramophone records was not unique to NIROM. In European broadcasting, recorded-sound collections in the 1930s initially consisted largely of commercial music discs, later supplemented by recordings of radio music, spoken word and sound effects. In the Dutch East Indies, records were especially useful because they were cheaper than live performance, could fill airtime and provided repertory for which local performers were not readily available.
The use of records was uneven across NIROM's services. The Western programme relied heavily on gramophone music: available tabulations indicate that 68 per cent of music broadcasts in 1935 and 82 per cent in 1937 were from records. At the same time, live performance was often presented as more desirable. The Eastern programme was criticized in its early years for relying on records at inconvenient hours, and later NIROM publicity treated the expansion of live performance as an improvement.
Artists and publications
NIROM published Soeara NIROM from 1934 to 1942 for Indonesian-reading audiences. The magazine introduced broadcasts, performers and musical culture connected with the Eastern programme. Its coverage shows the importance of kroncong, Javanese music, Sundanese music, Malay, Chinese and Arabic musical genres in NIROM's Indonesian-language radio culture.
Featured performers included Annie Landouw, an Eurasian singer associated in programme material with kroncong rumba, and kroncong singers S. Abdullah and Miss Iem. Malay and bangsawan-linked repertory included singers such as Miss Maimoon, Miss Tjiah, Miss Salmah and Miss Riboet. Arabic and gambus programming included Syech Albar, a Hadhrami Arab performer from Soerabaja, and his gambus orchestra.
Programme evidence from 1938 also includes Koesbini, Miss Tioe and broadcasts by Gamboes Orkest “Pemoeda” under H. Moh. Jasin Al Djawi. By 1942, Malay music programming included groups such as Penghiboer Hati, Sinar Medan and Patjaran Muda, while gambus groups were associated with Batavia, Semarang, Medan and Garut.
Miss Riboet remained associated in later memory with Indies popular entertainment and radio listening. In a 1996 newspaper essay on the writer Dé-Lilah and stamboel theatre, Rudy Kousbroek recalled having heard Miss Riboet on NIROM as a child.
The boundaries between Western and Eastern musical categories were porous. Jazz and kroncong were sometimes treated as separate genres for separate audiences, but both circulated across social categories. Music from Ambon and Manado could be reclassified for Western listeners, while kroncong became one of the most visible musical forms of NIROM's Eastern broadcasts.
Local broadcasting societies