Media in Pretoria
Radio and TV broadcasting in South Africa
Radio and TV broadcasting in Pretoria is supplied via a network of VHF/FM and UHF transmitters and repeaters owned and operated by Sentech - South Africa's state-owned broadcast signal distributor - from four transmitter sites in and around the city. A number of community radio stations operate transmitters from non-Sentech sites.
The inception of an FM broadcast service in South Africa, began on 1 September 1961 from what is now known as the Sentech Tower in Brixton, Johannesburg. The remainder of South Africa was initially served by medium wave transmitters, which were essentially localised to the larger centres. A massive drive through the 1960s and 70's saw the roll-out of the FM network to the rest of the country. Much of the original equipment supplied was through technology exchange programmes, meaning that the transmitters were of European design, but manufactured in South Africa. Original networks were based on 3 kW tube FM equipment, operating into channel combining equipment to allow the use of a common transmit antenna system, with a gain of around 10-12 dB. Sentech embarked on a huge programme in the late 1980s to effect replacement of these ageing FM transmitter and antenna systems. In world terms, it was the single largest contract awarded to a local manufacturer for the supply of FM transmitters.
In South Africa, digital migration still has to happen. Currently, analogue TV occupies the VHF frequencies where digital radio needs to migrate.
“Media in Pretoria” enters the record as radio and TV broadcasting in South Africa. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Media, Pretoria and Radio can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Media in Pretoria” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Media, Pretoria and Radio provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6805762. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Media in Pretoria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.