SRG celebrates its 90th anniversary

SRG is celebrating its 90th anniversary in a low-key way with a special anniversary collection of documentaries on its new streaming platform Play Suisse. The films also provide an insight into the multifaceted history of the media company and Switzerland's past since SRG was founded in 1931.

Airfield transmitter at the beginning

The first public radio stations in Switzerland were airfield transmitters in Lausanne, Geneva and Zurich. They broadcast news and weather reports for aviation, in between playing music from records, gradually adding general news and sports results. The seven regional organizations merged on 24 February 1931 to form the Schweizerische Rundspruchgesellschaft (SRG) association.

News only from SDA and "Spiritual National Defense"

SRG received the sole license for radio broadcasts in Switzerland from the Federal Council. By contract, information could only be obtained from the Swiss News Agency SDA. When Rhaeto-Romanic was recognized as Switzerland's fourth national language in 1938, the Zurich radio studio also began broadcasting in Rhaeto-Romanic.

ETH Zurich presented the new television technology for the first time in Switzerland at the National Exhibition in 1939. During the Second World War, SRG supported the "spiritual national defense" with its three national broadcasters, Radio Beromünster (German), Radio Sottens (French) and Radio Monte Ceneri (Italian). The broadcasts on the political and military situation were transmitted worldwide via shortwave. Radio Beromünster, named after the country station Beromünster in the canton of Lucerne, was considered the only "free" German-language station in Europe at the time.

From 1953, SRG introduced an official television service. A one-hour program was broadcast five evenings a week in the Zurich region. In 1954, SRG founded Eurovision together with eight other European television stations. In 1957, SRG received the first official television license in Switzerland. From mid-1958, the broadcasts in Zurich were supplemented by German and French-language programs from Zurich and Geneva, while the Italian-speaking Swiss station broadcast programs from the other parts of the country with Italian commentaries. In 1961, Italian-speaking Switzerland received its first television studio in Ticino, and the first Rhaeto-Romanic program was broadcast in 1963.

Third programs for the young and international opening

In the 1970s, SRG was able to put new television studios into operation in Geneva, Zurich and Comano. From 1971, radio news was no longer produced by SDA, but became the responsibility of SRG. From 1974, "Istorgina da buna notg", the bedtime story in Romansh, was broadcast twice a week on television. In 1983, SRG introduced third programs for young audiences: DRS 3 and Couleur 3. And from 1984, teletext was available on Swiss television stations for the first time.

In the same year, SRG launched the joint program 3sat together with the German ZDF and the Austrian ORF and the French-language channel TV5 Monde with French and Belgian TV partners. In 1988, the Ticino channel Rete Tre was launched. In 1997, the second TV channels SF 2, TSR 2 and TSI 2, which are particularly important for sport, were put into operation and the previous telephone broadcasting was replaced by the three Swiss Satellite channels Radio Swiss Pop, Radio Swiss Jazz and Radio Swiss Classic.

First internet platform in the late 90s

In 1999, Schweizer Radio International launched the SRG's first internet platform: Swissinfo.ch provided worldwide access to SRG programs and information from Switzerland. In 2010, Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) and Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR) merged to form Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS). The same step was taken in German-speaking Switzerland in 2011, when Schweizer Radio DRS (SR DRS) and Schweizer Fernsehen (SF) were merged to form Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF).

On March 4, 2018, the Swiss electorate rejected a popular initiative to abolish the media levy by 71.6%. SRG then introduced extensive transformation measures and implemented cost-cutting measures worth millions due to falling advertising revenue. Covid-19 further fueled these cost-cutting efforts, even though SRG's programs enjoyed above-average popularity during the pandemic. The new streaming platform Play Suisse went live on November 7, 2020 and has already generated more than 200,000 subscribers to date.

Documentary series to mark the anniversary

To mark its anniversary, SRG would like to provide an exciting insight into the development of the last few decades. A series of documentaries from all language regions has therefore been compiled on the Play Suisse streaming platform, making it possible to relive some of the highlights in SRG's history. There is also the illustrated history of SRG since 1931 visualized in a chronicle.