Radio Development

The Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation, popularly called Radio Pakistan came into being as Pakistan Broadcasting Service on 14 August 1947 when Pakistan emerged on the world map as a new country. The independence of Pakistan was announced through Radio Pakistan on Aug 13, 1947 at 11:59 pm in Urdu, followed by a similar announcement in English.

At independence Pakistan possessed three radio stations at Dhaka (established in 1939), Lahore (1937) and Peshawar (1936). A major program of expssansion saw new stations opened at Karachi and Rawalpindi in 1948, and a new broadcasting house at Karachi in 1950. This was followed by new stations at Hyderabad (1951), Quetta (1956), a second station at Rawalpindi (1960) and a Receiving Centre at Peshawar (1960). A major step was the establishment of the Radio Pakistan World Service on 21 April 1973 for overseas Pakistanis followed by new stations at Khairpur (1974) and Bahawalpur (1975). Radio Pakistan opened a new broadcasting house in Khairpur on 7 May 1986, followed by relay stations in 1989 at Sibi and Abbottabad. The remoter parts of the country began to receive coverage with new stations opened in the 1990s at Chitral, Loralai and Zhob. In October 1998, Radio Pakistan started FM transmission and over the period 2002–2005, new FM stations were opened at Islamabad, Gwadar, Mianwali, Sargodha, Kohat, Bannu and Mithi. In last two and a half years three new networks have been launched by PBC. Thus radio in Pakistan has developed with time.