RTL streams French news, talk, and entertainment programming live, one of the country's most listened-to radio stations for decades, and you can hear it free on Radio Shuffle from anywhere in the world.
Born in Luxembourg to Reach France
RTL began broadcasting as Radio Luxembourg on March 15, 1933, from a transmitter in Junglinster, the creation of the Société Luxembourgeoise d'Études Radiophoniques, a company formed in 1929 specifically to secure broadcasting rights from the Luxembourg government, according to Wikipedia's history of the station. A 25-year agreement signed in 1930 gave Luxembourg a 30 percent cut of future profits in exchange for programming oversight, and the station went off the air entirely at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, resuming only once the war ended.
A "Peripheral" Station That Outgrew Its Loophole
From 1946 onward, Radio Luxembourg broadcast easily into France in German, French, Dutch, and English, operating as what became known as a peripheral station, a broadcaster based just outside France's borders specifically to sidestep a domestic law that restricted radio to public, state-run stations. That workaround gave the Luxembourg-based signal an outsized presence inside France for decades before French law ever caught up to the reality of its audience.
From Radio Luxembourg to RTL
The station renamed itself RTL, Radio Télévision Luxembourg, on October 11, 1966, a shift that downplayed the direct Luxembourg connection in its branding even as the transmitters stayed put. When President François Mitterrand finally legalized privately run domestic radio in France in 1981, RTL didn't lose ground to newly legal competitors, it won: the station became France's most-listened-to radio network from 1981 all the way through 2002, a 21-year run at the top of the ratings.
Still France's Biggest Station Today
RTL has held onto its position since, drawing around 6.4 million daily listeners as of 2018, according to Wikipedia, with news and current affairs making up roughly half of its programming. It now operates under Groupe M6 and RTL Group ownership alongside sister stations RTL2 and Fun Radio, the same corporate family behind several of France's most listened-to networks.
Why Tune In
RTL carries nine decades of history into its current run as one of France's dominant news and talk stations, built on a foreign transmitter loophole that turned into the longest winning streak in French radio ratings. For listeners who want French news and talk from the network the whole country has been tuning into the longest, it delivers exactly that.
Listen to RTL free on Radio Shuffle, streaming French news and talk radio live.