There were times (and not so long ago) when the question of radio frequencies was not raised at all, or was raised exclusively by communications specialists. Because for the people there were nothing of these frequencies, and they were called in a simple way - the first button, the second button. And there were two or three official radio stations in the country - All-Union Radio, Mayak, Yunost … I can’t remember the others. Except perhaps the enemy "Voices", which were carefully jammed by the special services.
In less than a quarter of a century…
At the beginning of the 90s of the last century, a real boom of radio began. The empire collapsed, the “buttons” were shuffled around, and the newly created “Radio of Russia” firmly settled on the first one. The usual wired broadcasting in the form of small receivers still remained in the kitchens and caught the same two frequencies of the Rossiya and Mayak radio stations. But the ethereal space was already being mastered at full speed by those pioneers whoI was lucky to grab the best waves from the unopened "radio cake". Every day, new, mostly commercial, small stations appeared on the air and entered the struggle for the attention of radio listeners.
Whose cones are in the forest
Today, the list of radio station frequencies can hardly be counted at once. Freedom! The only question is who will be able to get a license for their own wave, or rather, who will have enough money to open their own radio station. There is an absolute monopoly on the Russian media market of electronic media - FSUE "VGTRK" (Federal State Unitary Enterprise "All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company"). And most of the licenses for broadcasting activities - both on television and radio - are issued by this structure.
The age of numbers has arrived
Analogue broadcasting has practically ceased to exist. The wired radio, the so-called "kitchen" radio, was turned off first. However, it was partially preserved in Moscow. By the way, in the USA they do not even think of abandoning this only means of communication that can work without electricity. And it often comes to the rescue during natural disasters, when other communication with remote regions or farms becomes impossible.
So, digital broadcasting has become a fait accompli. Of course, this is progress, although in order to receive a signal from the broadcast frequency of radio stations, even the most familiar and popular, an ordinary radio listener needs to purchase a decoder and switch from analog to digital.
Who is on what wave
The radio listener has the opportunity to choose a station to his liking and discretion. Fortunately, now they are divided into formats - informational, entertaining, musical, romantic, just party and so on. Finding the frequencies of radio stations in Russia will not be difficult - there is advertising and the Internet for this. And the main channels have not changed their “registration” on the air for quite a few years now. So, "Radio of Russia" is in the FM band from 66.44 MHz and above, the frequency varies depending on the region. The channel almost universally abandoned longwave, mediumwave and shortwave broadcasting. The problem is that frequencies up to 80.00 MHz can not be caught on all modern radios. For example, a good car receiver starts at 80 MHz and up. To date, lower frequencies have been preserved only on cheap home receivers or old-style music centers.
The once-favorite radio station "Mayak" comes out on the wave 67, 22 FM, "Echo of Moscow" - 73, 82 FM. True, Mayak is still preserved in the shortwave range at a frequency of 549.
There is also VHF FM broadcasting, the so-called "bourgeois standard" with good listening ability - from 88 to 108 MHz. This package also includes solid stations - the same "Echo of Moscow", "Avtoradio", "Radio Maximum", "Radio of Russia Nostalgia", "Nadezhda", "Police Wave" - and many minor ones.
Fortunately, there is a separate "Children's Radio" with a license to broadcast in 34 regions of Russia. In each region, this channel has its own frequency, for example, in Moscowit is 96, 8 FM, in Krasnodar - 88, 7 FM, in St. Petersburg 107, 3 FM.
Voices from beyond the cordon
The World Wide Web is often called the "world dump" - because of the qualitative heterogeneity of the contents of the virtual space. And it is hardly possible to significantly influence this process. Something similar is now happening in the media space. The ethical component of the modern television product offered daily to the Russian consumer does not stand up to scrutiny. Compared to this, the frequencies of radio stations, for all their heterogeneity, are more restrained. Although there are many stations that understand the meaning of freedom of speech in a peculiar way. But that's a different story.
If earlier all attempts to catch and listen to foreign radio waves were punishable by law, now there are almost no problems with this. So, Radio Liberty broadcasts freely from Prague in the range from 68.00 MHz. The BBC has been occupying the medium wave of 1260 kHz for many decades. "Voice of America" is on the wave of "World Radio" at a frequency of 810 kHz. Other "Voices" are constantly broadcast - Korea, Iran, Vietnam.
And by and large the frequencies of radio stations, both Russian and foreign, are not kept secret today. They are available both technically and informationally. All of them have their Internet versions, so it is possible to listen to the radio online even around the clock. The main thing is to find your wave and not lose it in this huge information flow.
