HISTORICAL BACGKROUND OF

RADIO KANO NIGERIA

Radio Kano’s history is dated back to 1946, as the station was originally a
branch of the Radio Distribution Services (RDS) established by the then
British Colonialists. Two other Radio distribution services established in
the country within the same period were in Lagos and Ibadan. The first
officer-in-charge of the radio distribution service in Kano in 1946 was late
Alhaji Bello Dandago (Sarkin Dawaki Maituta). When the station assumed
the name of provincial broadcasting house some years later, it also had
various veteran broadcasters as officers-in-charge at different times.

It was not until 1958 that a 1kw transmitter was installed in Kano with
coverage of about 25–kilometer radius to serve Kano municipality. All the
then provincial stations usually repeated the centrally produced or regional
programmes originating little of local programmes of their own.
Programming was further fragmented by the need to divide time among
the national network in Lagos and the regional station at Kaduna (Bida:
1979).

It was these radio distribution service that metamorphosed to become the

Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) and subsequently the Nigerian
Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) in 1956 with headquarters in Lagos
(Mckay:1946). In later years, more stations were established in other
provinces in the federation.

When states were created in the country in 1967, the Nigeria Broadcasting
Corporation provincial stations in their respective states still maintained
their identity. However, it was not until 1978, that the then Federal Military
Government decided to reorganize the broadcast industry in the country.
Consequently, decree No.8 of 1979 was promulgated and the Nigerian
Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) became Federal Radio Corporation of

1
Nigeria (FRCN). This led to the handing over by the federal military
government all the NBC stations in the various States of the federation to
their respective state governments to manage, thereby leaving only 4 FRCN
stations in Kaduna, Enugu, Ibadan and the Lagos headquarters under the
control of the federal government. Following the 1978 handing over, the
defunct NBC station in Kano became known as Kano State Radio
Corporation (Radio Kano). Radio Kano now has a second channel known
as Radio Kano II FM stereo, which was established in 1986 and
transmission started in 1987. The establishment of the FM channel is
mainly for musical entertainment and for revenue generation since the FM
system worldwide is mainly used for musical entertainment. The FM
channel is the main source of revenue generation for Radio Kano.

At the moment Radio Kano has 6 Department each headed by either a

Director or Deputy Director. The Departments are as follows: - Admin &
General Services, Programmes (AM), Programmes (FM), Engineering,
News & Current/Affairs, and Commercial Services.

Radio Kano has its Headquarters at No.1 Ibrahim Taiwo Road, Kano which
is popularly known as “Gidan Bello Dandago”. The head office houses the
studios, Links and the FM transmitters. The station also has other AM
Transmitting stations located at Tukuntawa and Jogana.
At the moment Radio Kano transmits on the following channels:

Tukuntawa Tx - 549Khz
546 meters
Jogana Tx - 729 Khz
412 meters
FM Tx - 89.32Mhz & 96.89 Mhz
OB Link - 366.72 MHz