Magyar Rádió (, MR, ''The Hungarian Radio Corporation'', also known as ''Radio Budapest'') was

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

's publicly funded

radio broadcasting Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio signal, 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 lan ...

organisation until 2015. It was also the country's official international broadcasting station. Since 2011, MR has been managed and primarily funded by the Media Service Support and Asset Management Fund (, abbreviated MTVA). This government organization also managed the public service broadcasters Magyar Televízió and Duna Televízió, as well as the Hungarian

news agency A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency ma ...

Magyar Távirati Iroda. On July 1, 2015, Magyar Rádió and the three other public media organisations managed by the MTVA were merged into a single organisation called Duna Media Service (). This organization is the legal successor to Magyar Rádió and is an active member of the

European Broadcasting Union The European Broadcasting Union (EBU; , UER) is an alliance of Public broadcasting, public service media organisations in countries within the European Broadcasting Area (EBA) or who are member states of the Council of Europe, members of the ...

Domestic networks

With its headquarters in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

and regional offices around the country, MR was responsible for public service broadcasting throughout the Hungarian Republic. As well as maintaining regional studios, the corporation produced multiple different Hungarian-language radio channels (''Kossuth'', ''Petőfi'', and ''Bartók'') covering the full range of public-service radio provision, and a fourth channel (''MR4'') aimed at the country's linguistic minorities.

Kossuth Rádió

Created in 1925 and named after

Lajos Kossuth Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva (; ; ; ; 19 September 1802 – 20 March 1894) was a Hungarian nobleman, lawyer, journalist, politician, statesman and governor-president of the Kingdom of Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, r ...

, the channel is the official radio station of

. It is the main channel of Hungarian Radio. It primarily broadcasts news, including interviews, discussions, reports, and other speech-based programmes.

Petőfi Rádió

Named after the poet

Sándor Petőfi Sándor Petőfi ( []; né Petrovics; ; ; 1 January 1823 – most likely 31 July 1849) was a Hungarian poet and Classical Liberalism, liberal revolutionary. He is considered Hungary's national poet, and was one of the key figures of the Hungari ...

, the station is aimed at younger generations and broadcasts

pop music Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, ''iarchive:cambridgecompani00frit, The Cambridge Companion to Pop ...

Bartók Rádió

Named after the composer

Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hunga ...

, the station is dedicated to

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

. It hosts talk programmes in addition to orchestral and

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

music. Supposedly, only a few thousand people listen to this station, and proposals to terminate Rádió Bartók have been made several times but never enacted.

Nemzetiségi Rádió

This radio channel airs programmes in languages of the national minorities of Hungary.

Parlamenti Adások

Parliamentarian broadcasts.

Dankó Rádió

Named after Pista Dankó, this radio station airs regional content throughout Hungary, plays

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

, and broadcasts operetta shows. It claims to be available 24/7 on the internet and FM. Also broadcasting on weekdays via

medium wave 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 daytim ...

. Then the station's frequencies are handed over to Kossuth Rádió for the rest of the night.

History and profile

Hungarian Radio uses the slogan often heard in radio commercials: "From clear source only". The buildings and studios of the Radio are located in

, in the block between Bródy Sándor Street and Pollack Mihály Square. The construction of Studio No. 6, an orchestral studio, is linked to Georg von Békésy’s name, who was awarded the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

for his acoustic research in 1961. On July 1, 2007, Radio Budapest cancelled programming in foreign languages. On December 22, 2012, all regional public service radio programs were cancelled and regional studios closed permanently. On June 30, 2011, Magyar Radio closed its Radio Theatre Office and dismissed all dramaturgy staff. Digital Radio Broadcasting (DAB+) experiments, which carried all public service stations and were never licensed commercially, was terminated on September 5, 2020.

In popular culture

In 1974, Locomotiv GT's Locomotiv GT (Dunhill Records 811) was released with a bumper sticker with the slogan "Radio Budapest Loves You!"

References

External links

*
Kossuth Rádió Online

Petőfi Rádió Online

Bartók Rádió Online

Magyar Rádió Streaming
{{DEFAULTSORT:Magyar Radio Eastern Bloc mass media Radio stations in Hungary International broadcasters European Broadcasting Union members Hungarian-language radio stations Multilingual broadcasters Radio stations established in 1925 1925 establishments in Hungary 2015 disestablishments in Hungary Government-owned companies of Hungary MTVA (Hungary) Publicly funded broadcasters