Omroep Brabant is celebrating: 25 years ago, the very first TV broadcast was held. For many well-known TV faces their career started in Brabant. Today Astrid Kersseboom looks back on her time at Omroep Brabant. She was a presenter from the very beginning at Brabant Nieuws.
Astrid Kersseboom was a presenter from the very beginning at Brabant Nieuws in 1997, after she had already made radio for Omroep Brabant in the years before. A very young team worked on the first TV broadcasts. “As preparation we went survival in the Ardennes, to get to know each other”, she remembers.
“I was able to practice a lot with the sentence ‘as you notice technology is letting us down for a while’.”
Astrid was 31 at the time. She was not nervous before the first broadcast. “I’m not that nervous. If something technically goes wrong, you just have to name it. At that time, things often went wrong, because we were one of the first broadcasters to have everything digital: from the cameras to the broadcasting street. That faltered in the beginning. I was able to practice a lot with the phrase: as you notice, technology is letting us down for a while”, laughs Astrid.
Omroep Brabant was a springboard for Astrid where she could discover which direction she wanted to take with her career. “We had to make do with a small club. We were editor, reporter, editor-in-chief and presenter all at the same time. If you’re just starting out in journalism, it’s an amazing way to discover where your strengths lie and what you like.”
“Everyone left immediately after a last broadcast. I was not used to that at Omroep Brabant.”
After ten years at Omroep Brabant, the last year of which as the presenter of Brabant Nieuws on TV, Astrid left for the NOS in Hilversum. “I really had to get used to one thing there,” she says. “Everyone left immediately after a final broadcast. I was not used to that at Omroep Brabant. We always chatted after that. That is something Brabant, I think.”