The first radio station in South Africa was set up by the South African Railways in Johannesburg on December 29, 1923.

Others soon followed in Cape Town and Durban, and in 1961, South Africa got its first FM broadcast service.

Since then, radio has lost none of its appeals despite the rise of new streaming technologies, and remains the medium with the widest reach in the country.

According to BusinessTech, the latest statistics published by the Broadcast Research Council of South Africa show that many SA stations still receive a weekly listenership of well over a million people in a wide variety of languages.

The largest station is Durban-based Ukhozi FM which caters to the needs of the Zulu-speaking community. Between October 2018 and March 2019 the station had 7.6 million listeners a week.

This is far ahead of the second most popular station Umhlobo Wenene FM – a station which focuses on the Xhosa language-speaking community – which had 5.4 million listeners a week over the same time period.

Rounding up the top three is Metro FM with 4.3 million listeners a week.

If you ask South Africans which radio station would come out tops, some might be tempted to say 5FM, or Kfm, or maybe even 947, but they would be sorely mistaken.

Sure, all three feature in the top 20 (just), but it’s some others you may not have heard of that come out tops.

Below you’ll find the top 20 most popular stations in the country, sorted by weekly listenership:

[source:businesstech]