1 November 1928, 5pm

On Thursday 1 November 1928, at five in the afternoon, Professor Dragomir Hurmuzescu stands before the microphone at the headquarters of the Romanian Radiotelephony Broadcasting Society and opens the first official broadcast of Radio Romania. The Society had been founded in January, some six or seven years behind other countries; in the room, a small 150-watt transmitter waits on 736 kHz.

The opening word belongs to the chairman of the board: Hurmuzescu speaks of radio's role “for the spread of culture and for the unification of souls, since it can address an entire world”. The announcement — “Atenție! Aici Radio București” (“Attention! This is Radio Bucharest”) — is followed by the station signal, a fragment of the folk tune “Lelița”.

Then comes a music programme put together ad hoc by Mihail Jora, press news, verses read aloud, a weather bulletin and sports commentary. Everything goes out live — there was no other way then.

The road to five o'clock had begun 27 years earlier: in 1901 Hurmuzescu reproduced the Marconi and Popov experiments at Iași, and on 4 November 1901 he presented a transmitting and a receiving station at a public lecture. In 1921, the first experimental broadcast had linked the Herăstrău station with the Polytechnic School in Bucharest.

„As of 1 November the air is free, and Bucharest has joined the European concert. Refused for years, the insistence has managed to break the wall in the state's ear.”

— Tudor Arghezi, after the first broadcast

Two years earlier, in Iași

On the evening of 8 March 1926, Mihail Sadoveanu listened at Professor Ion Simionescu's house, in the Sărărie district of Iași, to a radiophony set: a soprano was singing the second act of Faust at the Vienna Opera — “and we heard her in Iași, in Sărărie”. He called it an evening “beyond compare” and wrote about it in the article “Radiofonie”.

„It is not the gramophone's machinery, not the cinema's shadows — it is the vibration of life, direct contact with man, my brother from afar.”

— Mihail Sadoveanu, “Radiofonie”, 1926

After opening night, the station sets a frame schedule: broadcasts from 6.30–8.30, 12.00–15.00 and 18.00–23.00. The identification signal stays the “Lelița” fragment, joined by the chords of the Royal Anthem and a rooster's crow, and the programme opens with the Lord's Prayer. That is how Radio Bucharest will sound until the rebellion of 21–23 January 1941.

Radio University

On 1 March, Radio University is inaugurated: lectures every day from 19.00 to 20.00. The board chairman, Dimitrie Gusti, demanded “a national radiophony, not one copied or borrowed from other countries”.

„A little box you open and become a citizen of the universe.”

— Perpessicius, on radio

„A musician who has laboured all his life can be heard, through broadcasting, by millions of people.”

— George Enescu

The house at 60 Berthelot

In 1930 the first studios rise at 60 General Berthelot street, to the plans of architect Liviu Ciulei, advised by G. M. Cantacuzino — who had studied the matter in Berlin and London. A 10 km audio cable links the studio to the Băneasa station. The state held 60 percent of the Society's 50 million lei capital.

On 21 March the first opera goes out from the studio — Rossini's Barber of Seville; two years later the Great Studio opens, today's Studio 8, and in 1932 comes the first football commentary, Romania–Yugoslavia.

In 1925 Romania counted 173 radiophonic subscribers — though in Bucharest, with good sets, foreign stations came through: Vienna, Budapest, Rome, Moscow, Zurich, Toulouse, Hamburg, Lemberg, Daventry, Paris, Breslau, Berlin, Königswusterhausen, Leipzig, Barcelona, Milan. Austria had 160,000 listeners, Sweden over 102,000; Germany had reached one set per 80 inhabitants, the United States one per 32.

The study writes “17 stations” but lists 16 names; here are the 16.

The weakest growth: 1933, only 3,000 new subscribers. The best: 1937 and 1938, about 56,000 a year.

At the decade's end barely 1% of the population owned a set — against 13.7% in Denmark, 10.9% in the United States, 10.3% in England and 9.3% in Sweden, as early as 1932.

On 7 March 1937 Radio Adevărul counted 162,766 subscribers and noted that, in Europe, a smaller share was found only in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.

In 1934 Romania there were 2 sets per 100 townspeople, but only 3 per 1,000 villagers — and the villagers wrote in, mostly through teachers, asking for more rural programmes.

The historian Eugen Denize saw four causes for the slow growth: the legal restrictions (eased only by the law of 4 April 1936), the price of sets, the import quotas, and the use of sets without paying the dues.

You are before a valve set, in 1928. Foreign stations crowd the scale, and somewhere, at 736 kHz, sits Radio Bucharest. Set the needle eight times — every choice tells its story.