Public radio Public radio in the France is produced by Radio France, which is license fee funded. RTE broadcasts four national networks on FM. France Inter broadcasts a mixture of news, talk, sport and popular music of all types. It is also available on long wave. France Musique broadcasts classical music, with a little jazz. France Culture is a speech network unique to France, broadcasting a mixture of arts, literature, science, history and education. France Info is a rolling news and information service. FM coverage is less extensive than the other three networks and is supplemented by medium wave in many areas. A fifth national network, Le Mouv', comprising contemporary and new music, is broadcast only to a few major cities. France Bleu is a network of about 40 regional FM stations, which opt in and out of a national programme of oldies music, formerly broadcast as a separate service on medium wave. Additional F.I.P. local stations, broadcast to Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes and Strasbourg a broad music mix of classical, jazz, world and pop interspersed with travel news. Commercial radio France has a long history of commercial radio broadcast from outside its borders. RTL radio and Europe 1 have broadcast to the North East half of France on long wave for decades from transmitters in Luxembourg and Germany, respectively. Radio Monte Carlo, now RMC Info, broadcast to the South East on long wave from Monaco. Lastly, Sud Radio broadcast to the South West from Andorra. From the 1980s, France has licensed these stations and many others to broadcast on FM. Commercial licenses in France are town/city based and do not cover the areas in between, so the historic stations have retained their AM transmitters to plug the gaps. The stations responded differently to the new system. RTL and Europe 1 both remained as mixed format, speech led stations and opened extra FM networks. RMC became a news station, while Sud Radio has remained a regional station for the South West, moving its medium wave transmitters into France itself. There are about 3500 licensed commercial stations in France, about 2/3 of which belong to 15 national networks. The remainder are local stations or belong to smaller networks. The major networks have around 50 to 200 FM transmitters each. They are Cherie FM (soft AC), R Classique (classical), Europe 1 (mainly talk), Europe 2 (contemporary hits), Fun Radio (pop), MFM (oldies), Nostalgie (oldies), NRJ (adult contemporary), RCF (Christian - doesn't cover Paris), RFM (Adult contemporary), Rire et Chansons (oldies and comedy), RMC Info (news), RTL (mostly talk), RTL 2 (dance) and Skyrock. In 2003, licenses were issued for around 30 commercial stations on medium wave. Most of these went to specialist stations. However, RMC was awarded licenses in five cities it doesn't serve on FM or long wave. Annuaire des radios Francais and Le Guide de la Radio both provide databases of French radio stations. A History of French Radio (in English) maybe found at the NMRG site.	Radio in... Australia Belgium Germany Ireland Netherlands UK USA Features index
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