IN Egypt, there are ten Internet radio stations that operate out of websites. One is called Misr Radio Station, while the Muslim Brotherhood, an outlawed Islamist group, also runs another one of them. These stations, which have to employ a lot of people, including announcers, directors and scriptwriters, rely on advertisements. Although many of them started with little or no capital, they now spend millions of Egyptian pounds annually. Net radio stations can be used for chatting for free, while they can also be used for business, political reasons or, as in the case of the Brotherhood station, for promoting ideologies. In the US, there are around 800 such stations, while in the Arab region there are 47 in the Arabic language, according to independent sources. The most popular of Egypt's ten Internet radio stations, all in the Arabic language, are the abovementioned Misr Radio and Horyatouna. These Internet stations, which broadcast both recorded and live programmes, have been created as a result of streaming technology, according to a software expert called Salah Badr Eddin. There are many programmes for setting up Internet radio stations, such as Windows Basic Server Real and Media Encoder System, for small numbers of listeners. For broadcasting to a larger audience, Media Service 3 Windows is recommended. The cost varies, depending on the expected number of users. Announcer Osama Mounir, who owns Misr Radio, told the local magazine Al- Mussawer that he had launched the station in February 2009 with capital of LE1 million (about $180,000). “I employ around 35 people and they get good salaries,” said Mounir, who stressed that they do broadcast ads and haven't had any financial problems. Although he is an announcer, Mounir doesn't present any of the programmes on the station. He added that the number of listeners has been continually increasing over the past year. Announcer Sabri Serag, who works for Horyatouna ('Our Freedom'), says that their station was Egypt's first professional Internet radio station, when it was launched three years ago. Around 130 people work for Horyatouna, which is financed by nonprofitable media agencies. Professor Sami el-Sherif of the Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University, notes that these radio stations are springing up because there is more media freedom these days. "They need to be properly censored. There need to be regulations and laws to control these stations, which are cheap and easy to set up. But they'll never compete with the regular radio stations,” he explains.
