Special thanks to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing the latest Wavecan script, featuring Albania's radio history.
Jeff: Over 20 years ago here in Wavescan, in March 2004, we did a brief feature on broadcasting in and from the country of Albania. Ray Robinson in Los Angeles has now updated that information and has added considerably more contextual research to the story. Here’s Ray.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Albania is a small mountainous country on the Adriatic coast of the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe. This country is a little over 200 miles long and a little less than 100 miles wide, with a total area of 11,000 square miles. The largest city in Albania is Tirana which is also the capital, located almost in the center of the country.
The total population of Albania, which once stood at over 4 million, has declined in recent years and now stands at around 2.8 million. The national language is Albanian which is spoken with two major dialects, Gheg in the north and Tosk in the south. Albania’s flag is red with a black two-headed eagle, and interestingly, the name for Albania in the Albanian language is Shqiperi, which means the "Land of the Eagle." These days, about half a million tourists visit Albania every year.
The first settlers in Albania about 3,000 years ago were the Illyrians, an Indo-European people who migrated from the east. Throughout the centuries since that time, many different ethnic peoples have swept through the area, each leaving their mark on the historical and cultural development of the country and the language. The country declared independence from the Ottoman Empire on November 28, 1912, which is now celebrated as the National Independence Day.
Initially in the interwar period, Albania was a republic, but in 1928 it transitioned to a monarchy under King Zog.
Construction of the first radio facility in Albania began in 1938 to serve three different purposes:
• local entertainment and information,
• international broadcasting, and
• international wireless communication.
The station at Laprake on the outskirts of Tirana was ceremoniously opened by King Zog and his wife Queen Geraldine Apponyi on Independence Day, November 28, 1938. The first broadcast consisted of choral singing, with an announcement in Albanian by Kaliopi Nushi, which translated into English was “Good day, this is Radio Tirana.”
On medium wave, this new station operated on 1384 kHz. Its 3 kW shortwave unit was primarily intended for international communication in Morse Code under the callsign ZAA, but it could also be heard with three hours of broadcast programming every day.
It was first noted in Australia with test broadcasts on February 1, 1939. The test programming was heard on 6090 kHz in the 49 metre band and announcements were given in five languages: Albanian, English, French, German, and Italian. Frequent identification was given as “Radio Experimental, Tirana, Albania.”
Several different channels in the 31, 41 and 49 metre bands were also noted around that era. Station ZAA was also heard exchanging messages in two-way communication in Morse Code with station IAC in Italy.
But, on April 7th, 1939, Italian troops invaded Albania, five months before the start of the Second World War. Two days later, King Zog fled to Greece. Albania then became a puppet state of Mussolini’s regime in Italy until 1943, when the Nazis occupied Albania directly.
During the Italian occupation, the original Albanian callsign was retained. The new shortwave broadcasting station ZAA in Albania was heard periodically over the next few months with regular programming, but in July 1939 it was noted closing with the Italian National Anthem. However, with the changing events in continental Europe we find that the last logging of Radio Tirana during this era was reported in an Australian radio magazine for September 1940.
In 1944, Albanian partisan forces under the leadership of Enver Hoxha successfully liberated Albania from German Occupation. Hoxha then established the People’s Republic of Albania, embracing Marxist-Leninist ideologies, and he implemented a very authoritarian and isolationist regime, which would last for more than 40 years.
In February 1946, the broadcasting service from shortwave station ZAA was once again heard in Australia and New Zealand.
In the very first edition of the World Radio Handbook in 1947, Albania is listed with a 1kW medium wave transmitter on 1500 kHz (200m), and also listed are three 3kW shortwave transmitters on out-of-band frequencies in regional locations, that were probably mostly used for communications purposes. All broadcast programming was on medium wave in Albanian except for half an hour of news in English at 2000 UTC on 7895 kHz, 38 metres, and at 2200 on the same frequency, a 45 minute relay of Radio Tirana for Albanians abroad could also be heard.
In 1948, nightly news was introduced on shortwave in Russian, Romanian, Italian, French, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish and Serbo-Croat in addition to English.
In 1949, new studios and offices were built for the national radio service in central Tirana, and three new low power medium wave transmitters were added in regional cities.
In March 1950, the main medium wave transmitter in Tirana was replaced with a new 100 kW unit on 1358 kHz (221m), the existing regional low power units were all replaced with new 5 or 10 kW transmitters on new frequencies, and five more 3kW shortwave transmitters were added.
It appears that in 1956, the domestic service of Radio Tirana switched frequency to 1088 kHz (276m), and dropped the power to 50 kW. Beginning in 1960, some Arabic and Italian programming was added to that medium wave frequency in the evenings.
In November 1961, a new radio centre was opened equipped with one medium wave and two shortwave transmitters for the external service. Radio Tirana then upset radio amateurs by using one of the new transmitters, a 25 kW unit, for its foreign language services on 7090 kHz in the European 40 metre ham band, in addition to the 3 kW one on 7850. Then in 1963, they exacerbated the situation by increasing the power on 7090 to 50 kW.
In the 1950’s, Albania had good diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, but disagreements over Soviet policies led to strained ties and eventually diplomatic separation in 1961. In the mid-1960’s, being both anti-West and anti-Soviet, Albania’s enduring partnership became the one it developed with Communist China, and after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1968, Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact completely. During that era of Chinese friendship, Radio Tirana was noted being relayed to the United States via Radio Peking, usually on two channels in parallel, and Radio Peking was similarly heard in Europe via a high-powered medium wave station in Albania.
A major expansion of Radio Tirana’s Foreign Service came in 1967, with many more frequencies and broadcast hours being added, as well as more languages such as Czech, Indonesian, Polish and Spanish. Courtesy of the Chinese, two new 500 kW shortwave transmitters were installed, and in consequence, some broadcasts of Radio Tirana were then designated for listeners outside Europe, in North America, Latin America, Asia or Africa. Transmissions in English to Australia were added the following year.
And thus, from the late 1960’s to the 1980’s, Radio Tirana was a fairly major international broadcaster, with a voice on the bands that was well-known to SWL’s and DXers. During those Cold War years, because of Albania’s isolationist policies (Albanians were not allowed to leave, and foreigners were not allowed in) the small country became something of a curiosity.
In 1976, Albania became the world’s first constitutionally atheistic state. Under this regime, Albanians were forced to renounce their religious beliefs, adopt a secular way of life, and embrace socialist ideology. And all of that was reflected in Radio Tirana’s programming output, mostly propaganda, which grew to 66 hours of programs in 20 foreign languages every day. Here’s a classic sign-on in English from 1976, on 6055 kHz:
During the 1980’s and early 1990’s the international service was broadcast on 1395 kHz medium wave (along with various short wave frequencies) and was received throughout Europe during the evening and through the night.
In the wake of the anti-communist revolutions that took place across Eastern Europe in 1989, Enver Hoxha’s government did concede to allow multi-party democratic elections. During the last months of the socialist era, overtly political programming was drastically scaled down, and the long-established practice of playing "The Internationale” at the end of each broadcast was abandoned.
The communist government was eventually defeated at the ballot box in 1992. After Albania’s communist system disintegrated, the new government embarked on an active path towards Westernization, with ambitions to join both NATO and the EU.
In 1992, Trans World Radio entered an agreement for some of their Eastern European programming from Monte Carlo or Cyprus to be relayed over the high powered medium wave station at Filake, Albania, and this was followed shortly afterwards with the use of Albania’s shortwave facilities also.
These days, Albania is at least nominally a Muslim-majority country, with 57% of the population in the latest census stating they were Sunni Muslims. Albania officially joined NATO in 2009, and was granted EU candidate status in 2014. But, the GDP per capita is only about 30% of the EU average, and the unemployment rate stands at about 15%. In consequence, many Albanians have left the country in recent years looking for higher standards of living, either in the UK or elsewhere in the EU. And sadly, much of the people trafficking that takes place across Europe is said to be controlled by Albanian gangs.
The external service of Radio Tirana on all medium and short wave transmitters, and also the relay of China Radio International, ended in March 2017. From the mid-1990’s, privately owned radio stations started to occupy the vast empty Albanian FM band, and today, all broadcasting in Albania is on FM only. There is no more foreign language programming, but the BBC World Service, Voice of America and Radio France International do all have FM relays in Tirana.
The first known QSL’s from Radio Tirana were carbon copy letters, though in the 1960’s cards were printed that featured peasant art.
Back to you, Jeff.
(AWR/Wavescan)