community radio
Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial broadcasting, commercial and public broadcasting.
Community broadcasting, Community stations serve geographic communities and communities o ...
station based in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
,
France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
. It broadcasts on 94.8 MHz in a time-sharing agreement with two additional Jewish stations, Radio J and RCJ, from a transmitter in the
17th arrondissement of Paris
The 17th arrondissement of Paris (''XVIIe arrondissement'') is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, it is referred to as ''le dix-septième'' (; "the seventeenth").
The arrondissement, known as Batignol ...
, atop the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile. The station, characterized by its pro-peace editorial stance to the Israel–Palestine conflict, is financed by advertising.
History
After the liberalization of French radio in 1981, new stations sprang up across the country, including four Jewish stations in the Paris area. In 1983, the (HACA), then the French broadcast regulator, assigned a single frequency to the four stations, which would share time: Radio Shalom, Radio J, Radio Communauté (renamed RCJ in 1992), and Judaïques FM. The stations reflected different components and points of view of the Jewish community, with Radio Shalom having a "pacifist" and "secular" orientation. Radio Shalom was assigned the time of 4:30 to 9 p.m. for its broadcasts. This made it the only station whose programming was aired in one contiguous block of air time. Despite hours called "restrictive and inconvenient" in a 1996 feature in ''
Le Monde
(; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...
'', the station emerged as the most-listened-to of the quartet. In 1995, it absorbed a significant portion of Judaïques FM's operations in the context of serious discord between the 94.8 stations; the (CSA) attempted to mediate the dispute but was unsuccessful. Groups close to the various stations called the time-sharing agreement a "congenital flaw" and "radio aberration".
Albert Mallet, the director of Radio Shalom, made several bids in the mid-1990s for a full-time frequency for Radio Shalom in the crowded Parisian frequency spectrum but was unsuccessful. In 1996, the license for Chante France at 90.9 MHz came up for renewal and Radio Shalom presented a competing proposal, but the CSA opted to renew Chante France's license.
In 2000, businessman
Robert Assaraf
Robert Assaraf () (5 November 1936 in Rabat – 5 March 2018 in Ramat HaSharon) was a Moroccan Jewish historian and writer. He resided between Paris, France and Marrakesh, Morocco.
Career
Assaraf began his career in the cabinet of the Ministry ...
became the majority shareholder of Radio Shalom; the station continued its pro-peace editorial stance and general association with the
Peace Now
Peace Now ( ''Shalom Achshav'', ) is an Israeli liberal advocacy organization with the aim of promoting a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Early activism
In an official document from 1982 Peace Now advocated for an und ...
movement. A dispute over an advertisement promoting a pilgrimage to a Tunisian synagogue led to a falling out between Radio J and Radio Shalom, resulting in the latter breaking from the former's advertising management. At this time, Radio Shalom was the only one of the four that had relations with
Beur FM
Beur FM is a French local radio station catering mainly to France's Maghrebi communities including: Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians.