Radio Contact streams pop and Top 40 hits across French-speaking Belgium, running today at 102.2, 102.0, and 104.7 MHz out of a station that has been on the air since 1980 and once expanded as far as Bucharest and Istanbul.
Four Founders and a Seagull That Didn't Work
Francis Lemaire, Pierre Houtmans, Freddy Neyts, and Catherine Servaes launched Radio Contact on February 9, 1980, taking over the frequency of Brussels station Radio Kosmos, according to Wikipedia. The station's first mascot was a seagull, but the founders decided within a year that the bird looked too melancholy for a music station and replaced it after a brainstorming session, landing on the dolphin that has represented Radio Contact ever since.
From a Brussels Signal to Bucharest and Istanbul
Radio Contact split its French and Dutch programming onto separate frequencies in 1981 and kept growing from there, picking up its first official license from Belgium's French Community in April 1987 and reaching half a million listeners within a year. The station then took its format abroad, launching a Bucharest station in 1990, adding satellite distribution across Europe in 1991, and opening outlets in Istanbul and Guadeloupe in 1993, an unusually wide footprint for a station that started on one repurposed Brussels frequency.
Why Tune In
Radio Contact carries more than four decades of Belgian commercial radio history into a straightforward pop and Top 40 format, still running under the same dolphin it settled on back in 1981. For listeners in French-speaking Belgium, it remains one of the country's steadiest music stations.