The Polish Radio (PR; Polish language: Polskie Radio, PR) is a national public-service radio broadcasting organization of Poland, founded in 1925. It is owned by the State Treasury of Poland. On 27 December 2023, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, due to the President's veto on the financing of the company, placed it in liquidation.
History
Polskie Radio was founded on 18 August 1925 and began making regular broadcasts from
Warsaw on 18 April 1926.
Before the Second World War, Polish Radio operated one national channel – broadcast from 1931 from one of Europe's most powerful longwave transmitters, situated at Raszyn just outside Warsaw and destroyed in 1939 due to invasion of Wehrmacht – and nine regional stations:
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Kraków from 15 February 1927
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Poznań from 24 April 1927
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Katowice from 4 December 1927
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Vilnius from 15 January 1928
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Lviv from 15 January 1930
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Łódź from 2 February 1930
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Toruń from 15 January 1935
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Warsaw from 1 March 1937 – known as Warszawa II, the national channel becoming Warszawa I from this date
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Baranavichy from 1 July 1938
A tenth regional station was planned for
Lutsk, but the outbreak of war meant that it never opened.
The invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union led to the destruction of the network in September 1939, with its final broadcast being a performance of Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. posth. by Władysław Szpilman. Years later, Szpilman played the same piece for the reopening of the station.
After the war, Polskie Radio was reconstructed with the assistance of the Soviet Red Army, which valued radio as a propaganda medium.
Channels
National
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Program 1 (Jedynka – One) – information and adult contemporary music (longwave (225 kHz), FM broadcasting, DAB+ and Internet radio)
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Program 2 (Dwójka – Two) – classical music and cultural (FM, DAB+ and the internet)
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Program 3 (Trójka – Three) – Rock music, Alternative rock, jazz, and eclectic (FM, DAB+ and the internet)
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Polskie Radio 24 (PR24) – news and spoken-magazines (FM, DAB+ and the internet)
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Program 4 (Czwórka – Four) – youth oriented (DAB+ and the internet)
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– Polish classical music (DAB+ and the internet)
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– children programming during daytime, parents magazines in the evening and Jazz music at night (DAB+ and the internet)
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– music and information for drivers' (DAB+ and the internet)
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– polish music (internet only)
Regional stations
Polskie Radio also operates 17 regional radio stations (operating on FM and DAB+), located in:
City stations
Polskie Radio offers city stations in:
All city stations but Radio Szczecin Extra are being broadcast on FM and in Internet, while Radio Szczecin Extra is available only in Internet and via DAB+.
Digital-only
Polskie Radio also offers regional digital-only stations (all operating in Internet and DAB+ only) in:
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Kielce – Folk Radio (folk music)
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Kraków – OFF Radio Kraków (cultural)
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Wrocław – Radio Wrocław Kultura (cultural)
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Opole – Radio Opole 2
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Olsztyn – Radio Warmii i Mazur
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Łódź – Radio Łódź Extra
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Kraków – Radio Kraków Kultura
International
Music charts
Polskie Radio Trójka has been compiling Polish music charts since 1982 – in an era before there were any commercial sales or airplay rankings – making them a significant record of musical popularity in Poland. Chart archives dating from 1982 are available to the public via the station's website.
"Dwa Teatry" Festival
Since 2001, Polskie Radio, jointly with
Telewizja Polska, hold the
"Dwa Teatry" Festival" (
Polish language:
Two Theaters), an annual festival showcasing their
Television play and
. During the closing ceremony, awards are presented in several categories, recognizing the best productions and acting performances.
Notable people associated with Polskie Radio
Czesław Miłosz, recipient of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature, worked as a literary programmer at Polish Radio Wilno in 1936.
Controversy
A.I generated programming
On 29 October 2024, OFF Radio Krakow released a programme that presented itself as an interview with laureate Wisława Szymborska who had died in 2012 thus her voice being artificially generated; this was not long after its entire editorial team was dismissed. This was met with outrage with audiences voicing support for the dismissed crew as well as the signing of a petition against the move with more than 15,000 names in.
See also
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Informacyjna Agencja Radiowa
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Radio stations in interwar Poland
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NOSPR
- Flagship commercial radio stations in Poland
External links
