Radio broadcasting in Egypt began in the 20th century, in 1924 as privately owned and operated community stations. Later, in 1934 private ownership and operation were abolished and radio broadcasting was nationalized ever since.[1]
By the early 1990s, Egypt had only 4 FM stations in Greater Cairo (2 in Alexandria), but the number increased to 6 in Greater Cairo (4 in Alexandria) by the end of the decade. The increase in the number was merely a rebroadcast of the already AM radio stations. In 2000, AM stations (on the medium wave band) started a phase of simulcasting to FM band, as of 2013, only one or two stations broadcast on AM without FM simulcasts.
All the local radio stations have always been publicly owned, however, state-controlled which make them in practice, stated owned, with the exception of the apolitical private radio station at El Gouna resort, named El Gouna Radio ("Lagoon Radio"). All broadcast media are somehow state controlled, even if partly or fully private.
As of 2002, there were only 8 radio stations broadcast on FM to Greater Cairo (6 in Alexandria), none of them was specialized in popular songs. On March 23, 2002, Voice of America (VOA) had changed its shortwave Arabic service to an appealing station for the youth, named Radio Sawa ("Radio Together"), started broadcasting on a more easily receivable MW signal from Cyprus.[2] For the first time, the state allowed Good News to start a joint venture with the state-controlled ERTU, which started a test broadcasting for two popular song stations to Greater Cairo, as of June 2002. The two were Nogoum FM ("Stars FM"; for popular mainly Egyptian songs) and Nile FM (for popular mainly American songs).
All local radio stations in Egypt are also simulcast on the series of the satellites (partly private but state controlled), Nilesat at 7 degrees west, except El Gouna Radio.
Local stations are typically broadcast on FM. Very few radio stations use the Radio Data System to broadcast the station name, but receiving the RDS is very rare in FM receivers in Egypt. Very few available mobile phones in Egypt which have an FM receiver, receive the RDS information. 90.9MHz is the only station to broadcast the current song or show title, but when the title is long, it is partly displayed. All of the radio stations are state-controlled, unless otherwise noted.
Greater Cairo
Greater Cairo region has the most number of FM stations in Egypt. Most transmissions, FM or TV, are broadcast from Mokattam hills, as they are the most elevated location within Greater Cairo, to make the transmission reach the widest area possible, however, the signals are weakly received farther than 40 kilometers, which makes transmission weak to the most eastern part of New Cairo, the eastern half of Shorouk City, two-thirds of western 6 October City, all of Madinaty, Badr and New Heliopolis.
A few of the following stations are broadcast on other frequencies in other regions in Egypt.
All stations which broadcast popular songs are mainly Egyptian songs with very few Levantine hits (mostly Lebanese) or other North African.
English, French, Greek, Italian, German – spoken content with western hits
yes
Formerly broadcast European Program on 95.4MHz and Greater Cairo Radio on 102.2 from February 2012 till mid-March 2013, off the air in May and June 2013, and off again since mid-August till the early 2020s?; Arabic: البرنامج الأوروپى
Simulcast on the MW band; Arabic: إذاعة الشباب و الرياضة
In the following table, far stations receivable at night that are broadcast on a nearby frequency to a local strong station, are omitted since it is normally impossible to receive on ordinary receivers. Likewise, very weak far stations are omitted. When daylight saving time is applicable to the local time in Egypt, an additional hour is added to the time in UTC.
3 stations sharing the same frequency; a temporary renewed use of the pre-2019 BBC AM frequency due to the 2023 Israel–Hamas war; Arabic: بى بى سى نيوز عربى; العربية إف إم; مونت كارلو الدولية
7
711
Youth and Sport
24h
Simulcast on the FM band; Arabic: إذاعة الشباب و الرياضة
8
774
Middle East Radio
24h
Simulcast on the FM band; Arabic: إذاعة الشرق الأوسط
9
819
General Program
24h
Simulcast on the FM band; Arabic: البرنامج العام,Transmitted from Batrah with 300 KW power.
10
864
Koran Radio
24h
Simulcast on the FM band,Transmitted from Santah with 500 KW power.
Saudi Arabian station; an extension to the broadcast time for the station on 594kHz
North coast
Foreign radio stations can be received in summer, mainly: Cypriot, Greek, Italian and Israeli radio stations, but reception is unreliable and fades quickly.
There used to be local radio stations which were aired in the languages, Armenian, Italian, French, Greek and English in the 1940s.
Marina area
Since 2009, the government sometimes occasionally broadcasts some radio stations which are only broadcast to Greater Cairo, on the same frequencies used in Greater Cairo. On occasions such as the official vacations in Egypt. The broadcasts can be received by nearby local touristic villages to Marina and very weakly in Alexandria, likewise the radio stations broadcast to Alexandria are received very weakly in and around Marina.
89.8MHz koran station covered Fayoum and Bani Sweif
101.4MHz northern upper station covered Bani Sweif and Fayoum
94.2MHz northern upper station covered Minya
Internet stations
After the slow adoption of broadband internet, in the mid-2000s, a number of internet stations streamed on the internet. Most have been streaming on a regular basis as of the widespread adoption of smartphones in the mid-2010s.
Examples
Hawak Radio (راديو هواك) since 2013 on Tunein;[11] based in Cairo[12]
TIBA Radio, private, German expat; Adult Contemporary and Classic Hits; based in Hurghada; since 2014[13]
Radio 5:14 (راديو 5:14) internet Christian podcast, based in Suez; since 2016[14]
EG on Air (إيچى اون اير), an Egyptian song radio, based in Giza;[15] since 2009 many stations intermittently,[16] regularly one station since 2019
International stations
As of the 1952 coup d'état, no foreign station is allowed to broadcast on Egyptian-controlled land with a 2018 exception in Alexandria (Radio Orient), therefore international broadcasters broadcast from lands close to Egypt, mostly close to the north of Egypt, from Cyprus. Many state controlled radio stations used to broadcast primarily on the medium wave using amplitude modulation broadcasting, but after the adoption of FM broadcasting in Egypt, most of them now are simulcasted on the medium wave and the FM band since the early 2000s. The state controlled radios aren't listed below.
AM radio broadcasting in Egypt had always been mono and other developments were never introduced. Likewise, the long wave band had never been used.
990kHz[24] (till 2019) Radio Sawa (American radio service) – news, informational content and popular songs. (since March 23, 2002;[2] Relatively weak signal; at first it simulcasted on 981 and 1260 kHz, in 2005 it changed the first frequency to 990 kHz, then it abolished the second one in 2008)
Short wave
In the 1960s, at time of Nasser rule, short wave broadcasting was important for the state. It used to broadcast stations to the Middle East which were of propagandist importance to the Egyptian regime and for propagating for Arab nationalism.
Egypt has long been the cultural and informational centre of the Middle East and North Africa, and Cairo is the region's largest publishing and broadcasting centre.
The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcasts radio news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages to many parts of the world on analogue and digital shortwave platforms, internet streaming, podcasting, satellite, DAB, FM and MW relays. In 2015, the World Service reached an average of 210 million people a week. In November 2016, the BBC announced that it would start broadcasting in additional languages including Amharic and Igbo, in its biggest expansion since the 1940s.
Shortwave radio is radio transmission using radio frequencies in the shortwave bands (SW). There is no official definition of the band range, but it always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz ; above the medium frequency band (MF), to the bottom of the VHF band.
Medium wave (MW) is a part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the daytime, reception is usually limited to more local stations, though this is dependent on the signal conditions and quality of radio receiver used. Improved signal propagation at night allows the reception of much longer distance signals. This can cause increased interference because on most channels multiple transmitters operate simultaneously worldwide. In addition, amplitude modulation (AM) is often more prone to interference by various electronic devices, especially power supplies and computers. Strong transmitters cover larger areas than on the FM broadcast band but require more energy and longer antennas. Digital modes are possible but have not reached momentum yet.
AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave transmissions, but also on the longwave and shortwave radio bands.
Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio station, while in satellite radio the radio waves are broadcast by a satellite in Earth orbit. To receive the content the listener must have a broadcast radio receiver (radio). Stations are often affiliated with a radio network that provides content in a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast, or both. Radio stations broadcast with several different types of modulation: AM radio stations transmit in AM, FM radio stations transmit in FM, which are older analog audio standards, while newer digital radio stations transmit in several digital audio standards: DAB, HD radio, DRM.
Radio Data System (RDS) is a communications protocol standard for embedding small amounts of digital information in conventional FM radio broadcasts. RDS standardizes several types of information transmitted, including time, station identification and program information.
In-band on-channel (IBOC) is a hybrid method of transmitting digital radio and analog radio broadcast signals simultaneously on the same frequency. The name refers to the new digital signals being broadcast in the same AM or FM band (in-band), and associated with an existing radio channel (on-channel). By utilizing additional digital subcarriers or sidebands, digital information is multiplexed on existing signals, thus avoiding re-allocation of the broadcast bands.
A subcarrier is a sideband of a radio frequency carrier wave, which is modulated to send additional information. Examples include the provision of colour in a black and white television system or the provision of stereo in a monophonic radio broadcast. There is no physical difference between a carrier and a subcarrier; the "sub" implies that it has been derived from a carrier, which has been amplitude modulated by a steady signal and has a constant frequency relation to it.
The FM broadcast band is a range of radio frequencies used for FM broadcasting by radio stations. The range of frequencies used differs between different parts of the world. In Europe and Africa and in Australia and New Zealand, it spans from 87.5 to 108 megahertz (MHz) - also known as VHF Band II - while in the Americas it ranges from 88 to 108 MHz. The FM broadcast band in Japan uses 76 to 95 MHz, and in Brazil, 76 to 108 MHz. The International Radio and Television Organisation (OIRT) band in Eastern Europe is from 65.9 to 74.0 MHz, although these countries now primarily use the 87.5 to 108 MHz band, as in the case of Russia. Some other countries have already discontinued the OIRT band and have changed to the 87.5 to 108 MHz band.
Digital Radio Mondiale is a set of digital audio broadcasting technologies designed to work over the bands currently used for analogue radio broadcasting including AM broadcasting—particularly shortwave—and FM broadcasting. DRM is more spectrally efficient than AM and FM, allowing more stations, at higher quality, into a given amount of bandwidth, using xHE-AAC audio coding format. Various other MPEG-4 codecs and Opus are also compatible, but the standard now specifies xHE-AAC.
Multichannel Television Sound (MTS) is the method of encoding three additional audio channels into analog 4.5 MHz audio carriers on System M and System N. It was developed by the Broadcast Television Systems Committee, an industry group, and sometimes known as BTSC as a result.
AM stereo is a term given to a series of mutually incompatible techniques for radio broadcasting stereo audio in the AM band in a manner that is compatible with standard AM receivers. There are two main classes of systems: independent sideband (ISB) systems, promoted principally by American broadcast engineer Leonard R. Kahn; and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) multiplexing systems.
FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting that uses frequency modulation (FM) of the radio broadcast carrier wave. Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to transmit high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting offers higher fidelity—more accurate reproduction of the original program sound—than other broadcasting techniques, such as AM broadcasting. It is also less susceptible to common forms of interference, having less static and popping sounds than are often heard on AM. Therefore, FM is used for most broadcasts of music and general audio. FM radio stations use the very high frequency range of radio frequencies.
Apex radio stations was the name commonly given to a short-lived group of United States broadcasting stations, which were used to evaluate transmitting on frequencies that were much higher than the ones used by standard amplitude modulation (AM) and shortwave stations. Their name came from the tall height of their transmitter antennas, which were needed because coverage was primarily limited to local line-of-sight distances. These stations were assigned to what at the time were described as "ultra-high shortwave" frequencies, between roughly 25 and 44 MHz. They employed amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions, although in most cases using a wider bandwidth than standard broadcast band AM stations, in order to provide high fidelity sound with less static and distortion.
CHOU is a multilingual Canadian radio station broadcasting in Montreal, Quebec at 1450 kHz and retransmitted at 104.5 MHz. The main programming is in Arabic language and caters for various Arab and Middle Eastern communities in Greater Montreal and vicinity in Arabic including Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian and Maghrebi dialects. CHOU also runs a two-hour weekly show in Armenian. It is also offered online and on various applications.
The National Media Authority, known until 2017 as Egyptian Radio and Television Union, is the public broadcaster of Egypt, operated by the Egyptian government. It is a member of the European Broadcasting Union.
Radio Dabanga (part of Dabanga – Radio TV Online is a radio and online news service that serves Sudan. The shortwave radio has been broadcasting since 1 December 2008. Current broadcasts last for a total of two hours each day. Radio Dabanga introduced an online radio feed in April 2023, broadcasting twenty-four hours a day. Dabanga also publishes its content on Satellite TV, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and SoundCloud. Depending on the medium, Radio Dabanga produces news in Sudanese Arabic and/or English. Shortwave radio remains the mainstay of the radio station; a high percentage of all Sudanese people are illiterate, a number that is relatively higher in Sudan’s remote areas and camps for displaced people. Many people here have no lifeline to the outside world other than telephone and radio, so it is Radio Dabanga’s mission to provide this. The radio programming is also carried on Dabanga’s satellite TV channel. Both the shortwave and satellite TV can broadcast without censorship and/or technical interference from within Sudan.
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