Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, John Green (ZS1JHG), who shares the following article from Tech Central:

100 years of radio in South Africa – and still going strong

Radio in South Africa turns 100 years old today. But advances in technology mean the medium is not standing still.

Today – Monday, 18 December 2023 – marks 100 years since radio was introduced in South Africa, with the first experimental broadcast going out from Railway Headquarters in Johannesburg on 18 December 1923.

Radio broadcasting began under the auspices of South African Railways, followed by the licensing of three more services: the Association of Scientific and Technical Societies in Johannesburg, the Cape Peninsular Publicity Association in Cape Town and the Durban Corporation, which began broadcasting in 1924.

These merged into the African Broadcasting Company in 1927, owned by a wealthy businessman, IW Schlesinger, but on 1 August 1936, they were sold to the SABC, established that year through an act of parliament.

The SABC took over the African Broadcasting Company’s staff and assets and maintained a state monopoly on radio until the launch in December 1979 of Capital Radio 604, and then Radio 702 in 1980.

In most of the world, reliance on the radio for communication came to an end in the 1950s and early 1960s with the advent of television – but in South Africa, where television broadcasting was not adopted until 1976 because the Nationalist government of the time considered it a threat to Afrikaner culture, reliance on radio lasted nearly two decades longer. This meant that South African programming could take advantage of the newest technological and production advances.

SABC stations included the English and Afrikaans language channels – eventually becoming SAfm and Radio Sonder Grense (RSG), respectively. Programming included news, plays and British content, and in 1950, the SABC launched Springbok Radio as a commercial, for-profit but still state-owned service. [Continue reading…]