Her children sometimes complained about it when Momma was out and about. Gonny Spermon (75) sometimes worked forty hours a week as a volunteer at the Local Broadcaster Goirle (LOG). The broadcaster has been around for fifty years, making it one of the oldest local broadcasters in the Netherlands. Everything has changed, except Gonny’s motivation: “I want to show people what is happening in the village.”
When the broadcaster moved to the Jan van Besouw cultural center in 1988, the location was a lot more glorious, says LOG chairman Henk Gabriëls: “A very large studio, in a room twice as high as this. And five times as long.” Gonny: “We had to give all that up, which I thought was very sad. But hey, otherwise we might not have been there.”
In 1976, because everyone in the village already had cable TV, Goirle was one of the six municipalities that was the first to start a local broadcaster. With a subsidy of €100,000, cameras were purchased, a studio was set up and a production vehicle was purchased with which volunteers could make broadcasts on location.
With her 42 years at the LOG, Gonny is a veteran. She started working in broadcasting in the early 1980s. She was the mother of three small children. “I didn’t want to work full-time anymore, but I didn’t want to just sit at home.”
“I wanted to work in radio, so you don’t have to put your face on the TV.”
The former chemical analyst came to live in Goirle in 1978, working for the local broadcaster was the ideal way to get to know the community. “I wanted to work in radio, because then you don’t have to put your face on the TV. But there were already enough volunteers there, so it became TV.”
“Most people find presenting scary,” adds Gabriëls. But due to the departure of two presenters, Gonny was asked. She received professional training from program makers from Hilversum.
Gonny became one of the hundred volunteers. Money came through subsidies, but also from the members. In its heyday there were 2,500, each of whom paid about ten guilders in contributions. “There were hardly any local broadcasters, so it was something special,” Gonny explains. “A lot of people recognized me. Great, because it also made it easy to get people in front of the camera for street interviews, for example.”
“Every week we built a set.”
The viewer rating in those days was the broadcast of the city council meeting: “We were the first with that.” ‘LOGtualities’, the weekly news program, was also popular. There was also a children’s program, a cooking program and even a soap opera: ‘Bij Joke’s’. Gonny: “That was really great. Every fortnight we built a set here. The stories were written based on Goirlese conditions.”
But times were changing. Less and less money came from the municipality. As more local broadcasters arrived, the shine faded and the number of volunteers decreased. And now that everyone can make their own videos with their mobile phone, things are in full swing.
Yet Gonny still enjoys doing it. “I also think it is important that a village has its own broadcaster. That you show what is happening in your village: how beautiful do you want it to be?”
Despite Gonny’s enthusiasm, the LOG’s survival is threatened. Because local broadcasters are required to merge, the Goirlese broadcaster will merge into one large regional broadcaster in Central Brabant within a few years. Gonny hopes that she will still have a permanent broadcasting point with the LOG: “So that we can still show our individuality.”
