Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation

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This article is about the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation. For other uses of the term, see PBC.

The Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) is the state-run radio service of Pakistan.

1 History
2 PBC Services
3 PBC News
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

The Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation was formed on 14th August 1947 when Pakistan became independent. It was a direct descendant of the Indian Broadcasting Company which later became All India Radio. At independence Pakistan possessed three radio stations at Dhaka, Lahore and Peshawar. A major programme of expansion saw new stations opened at Karachi and Rawalpindi in 1948, and a new broadcasting house at Karachi in 1950. This was followed by further stations at Hyderabad (1951), Quetta (1956), a second station at Rawalpindi (1960) and a receiving centre at Peshawar (1960).

In 1970, training facilities were opened in Islamabad and a station opened at Multan. A major step was the establishment of the Radio Pakistan World Service on 21st April 1973 for overseas Pakistanis followed by new stations at Khairpur (1974) and Bahawalpur (1975).

The main broadcasting unit of PBC at Islamabad moved to the new National Broadcasting House in 1977 and the service reached the remotest parts of Pakistan with stations at Gilgit (1977) and Skardu (1977) in the far north and Turbat (1981) in the far southwest. From 1981 to 1982 stations and transmitters were also established at Dera Ismail Khan, Khuzdar and Faisalabad.

Radio Pakistan opened a new broadcasting house in Khairpur on 7th 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 1997, the Federal Minister of Information inaugurated the computerisation of the PBC news processing system and availability of the news bulletins on the Internet in text and audio form ^[1].

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.

[edit] PBC Services

The PBC provides several services including:

Home Service (domestic network)
World Service (for overseas Pakistanis)
External Service
PBC News
- News & Current Affairs Channel
Sautul Qur'an (religious broadcasting)
FM – 101 (service in major towns and cities)
National Sound Archives

[edit] PBC News

The PBC News service broadcasts 149 news bulletins in 31 languages daily, covering world, national and regional news as well as sports, business and weather reports.