94.7 Highveld Stereo streams popular hits, local South African music, and entertainment talk from Johannesburg, and you can listen free on Radio Shuffle wherever you are. Broadcasting across Gauteng province, it is one of South Africa's biggest commercial stations, with a reach and history that go back much further than most listeners realize.
South Africa's first regional FM service
The station signed on September 1, 1964, as Radio Highveld, the first regional FM service run by the South African Broadcasting Corporation, according to Wikipedia's history of the station. In its earliest years it broadcast hourly news bulletins alongside easy listening music, a far cry from the hit-driven format the station runs today. That changed permanently in September 1996, when the SABC sold Radio Highveld into private hands. The station is now owned by Primedia, one of South Africa's largest media companies, and has evolved its sound and branding several times since leaving state ownership, eventually shortening its on-air identity to simply 947.
The world's second-largest timed cycle race
Highveld Stereo's biggest annual moment happens off the airwaves entirely. The station is the namesake partner behind Ride Joburg, previously known as the 947 Cycle Challenge, a mass-participation race that draws between 20,000 and 30,000 riders through Johannesburg every year, according to details compiled on Wikipedia's entry on the event. Riders cover a 94.7 kilometer course, a distance chosen to match the station's own frequency, passing landmarks including the Nelson Mandela Bridge and the city's historic mining district. It ranks as the world's second-largest timed cycle race behind only Cape Town's Cape Argus Cycle Race, and the event is now run in partnership with the City of Johannesburg and Discovery, cementing the station's role as a civic institution rather than just a place to hear the news and the latest hits.
A soundtrack for Gauteng, six decades running
From SABC-run easy listening to Primedia-owned hit radio, the station's core identity has stayed tied to one region for more than sixty years, even as ownership, branding, and playlists have changed around it. That kind of continuity is rare in commercial radio anywhere in the world. Listen to 94.7 Highveld Stereo free on Radio Shuffle to hear one of Johannesburg's most established stations, wherever you happen to be tuning in from.