The state of radio
The fabled Egyptian Radio just turned 69. Hanan Sabra speaks to its chairman, Omar Batisha, about the past, present and future of a historic institution
Egyptian radio aired its first broadcast on 31 May 1934, and has been an integral part of the country's political and entertainment backbone since then. While hundreds of talented singers, announcers, journalists and actors make their debuts on radio each year, the airwaves' non-stop mixture of music, news, commentary, and other entertainment, also carries within it the voices of both the people and the government.
Omar Batisha, head of the Egyptian Radio Union, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the service's archives are like a detailed mirror of contemporary Egyptian history. "Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977, the Camp David accords, signed by Egypt and Israel on 17 September 1978, the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 26 March 1979, followed by Egypt's regaining control of the Sinai in May 1982 were all important moments in Egyptian broadcasting, and all of these are available in our archives for researchers," Batisha said.
Even with the vast increase in the number of media outlets available to Egyptians today, Batisha said, "radio broadcasting is considered an important tool of political and national development, and radio still plays a major role, in collaboration with other media, in the formation of public opinion".
Batisha defended the media's "full freedom to put out its message" to the over 14 million radios owned by Egyptians.
According to Batisha, "shortly after its establishment, Egyptian radio was ranked third in the world, following the BBC and Sound of America." Egypt used to have 62 medium-wave (AM) radio stations -- at least one for each major town in the country -- and three short-wave transmitters that broadcast programmes to listeners in Egypt and overseas. Domestically, stations carried a number of national programmes as well as regional programmes designed for different parts of Egypt. The service used to broadcast in 33 languages, including the most common European and African languages.
With Nilesat's 1996 arrival, radio's reach expanded into nine national radio networks, with transmission covering all Arab countries, most of Africa and Europe, and some Asian countries, as well as the United States -- all in all, a total of 252 stations with a total broadcast capacity of 12,583 kw (kilowatt).
Today, "Radio Cairo broadcasts in 35 languages on short wave," Batisha said, "while an Arabic- language service, Voice of the Arabs, broadcasts to Europe and the Middle East." The Radio Union head said that Egypt also provides large amounts of radio programming to other countries, (averaging 550 hours daily overseas in 35 languages), and that there are plans to initiate cooperative efforts to provide historical archive material for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Under late President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the government used radio extensively to influence public opinion. Batisha recounted how "Radio Cairo was a link between Nasser and his pan-Arab constituency throughout the Arab world, and was regularly used to stir up popular feeling against rival Arab leaders." In 1956, radio played a role in orchestrating Abdel-Nasser's decision to nationalise the Suez Canal Company. "The signal to begin the action of nationalisation was the airing of specific songs on the radio," Batisha explained.
Only a few years earlier, on 23 July 1952, Anwar El-Sadat announced -- on the radio -- that the July Revolution had taken place, and that is how most Egyptians found out about it. According to Batisha, when Sadat became Egypt's president in 1970 he toned down some of the patriotic songs that were regularly being aired on the radio. In 1972, he began to relax controls on governmental organisations' information flow to the media. Nonetheless, after the 1973 October war, "in spite of the victory, the announcers tended to downplay news of the war," Batisha said. They would err on the side of caution when it came to "citing figures on the number of Israeli planes downed by Egypt until reports could be further verified. The idea was to avoid the shock of the 1967 defeat."
In 1967, as Israel was defeating Arab armies in the Six Day War, state-controlled radio broadcasts had mislead listeners for several days into thinking they were heading for a victory.
