World Radio Switzerland came close to going silent for good this year. Switzerland's only 24-hour English-language station had been losing money since the pandemic, and its two co-owners announced they were stepping back, warning that without a buyer the station would close in 2026. It didn't. On April 23, 2026, Aube Ondes SA, backed by Cedra Ventures, completed an acquisition that kept Geneva's international community tuned in.
Born From a Rejected Application
The station's roots go back further than most people listening today would guess. In the late 1980s, Swiss public broadcaster SRG SSR decided an English-language station in Geneva would serve the city's dense concentration of international organizations, and applied for an FM frequency. The first application, filed in 1992, was rejected; a resubmission in 1995 finally succeeded, and World Radio Geneva began broadcasting on June 25, 1996.
From Public Broadcaster to Private Station
The station changed structure twice in the years that followed. A 2007 change in Swiss broadcasting law folded it into the public service system on November 5 of that year under its current name, World Radio Switzerland, before it was privatized in 2011 under SwissVille Broadcasting Sàrl, co-directed by Mark Butcher and Katt Cullen. Under that ownership WRS built a real reputation, winning "Radio Station of the Year" at Swiss Radio Day in both 2012 and 2013 for the biggest net listener increase in French-speaking Switzerland.
A Post-Pandemic Squeeze
That reputation wasn't enough to protect the station from a harder economic reality. Butcher said profits had "declined precipitously since the COVID pandemic" even as the audience and sponsor base held steady, and with Butcher heading toward retirement and Cullen moving on to other projects, the station's continued existence depended entirely on finding someone willing to take it over. Cullen put it plainly at the time: without new leadership, "WRS will sadly close."
A New Owner Arrives in Time
Someone did step forward. Cedra Ventures, through its subsidiary Aube Ondes SA, acquired WRS in April 2026, installing Aurelien Chupin, a broadcaster with a background in both English- and French-language Swiss radio, as station manager. The new ownership has framed the acquisition around renewed investment and expanded staffing rather than a bare-bones rescue, positioning WRS to keep serving both Geneva's international organizations and the wider French-speaking Swiss audience it had spent over a decade building.