Rádio Comercial

Rádio Comercial is a commercial radio station in Portugal aimed at young people and adults. It has a broad format including contemporary, pop and rock music. It is among the most listened to radio stations in the country.

The station can trace its roots to Rádio Clube Português (RCP), a very important and influential station founded in 1930. RCP existed until 1975, when it was nationalized as part of the Carnation Revolution and subsequently swallowed into RDP. The FM network became RDP Programa 3 and the AM network, RDP Programa 4.^[1] Rádio Comercial was born on March 12, 1979, as a subsidiary of Rádiodifusão Portuguesa, replacing the former RDP networks. The name was chosen because it was the only RDP station to allow adverts at the time.^[2]

In the 1980s, the former Programa 3 was Comercial Onda Média, while the former Programa 4 was Comercial FM Estéreo. Comercial was in constant growth until the consolidation of local stations in the sector at the end of the decade. It was already leading the radio ratings in some sectors, largely due to its urban characteristics. Unlike Antena 1, which focused more on football, Rádio Comercial covered other sports that were easily ignored, such as tennis. In 1986, it was the first Portuguese station to use a helicopter for its traffic service.^[1]

Rádio Comercial was formally switched off from RDP's auspices in September 1992, six months ahead of its privatization.^[1]

The station was later privatized on March 31, 1993, to the Correio da Manhã newspaper, and later sold to Media Capital and PRISA, in 1997. From that time until 2003, the station focused on rock music. In 2022, the Media Capital Rádio group, which includes Rádio Comercial, was sold to Bauer Media Group.^[3]

During a one-year period from late 1992 to late 1993, the Greek-Californian artist Ithaka Darin Pappas, who lived in Lisbon for a six-year duration, hosted a small English-language segment on Rádio Comercial called Lounge Lizard Larry within the daily afternoon show, Quarto Bairro.^[4][5]

Quarto Bairro was produced by Eduardo Guerra and recorded by Pedro Costa (currently a DJ at Antena 3), with news by Sílvia Souto Cunha (present day editor of Visão Magazine). For the Lounge Lizard Larry sequences Ithaka would, for the most part, read his own poems, written specifically for the show, on top on B-side instrumental hip-hop tracks.^[6][7][8][9]

On one day in late 1992 at a café outside of the Rádio Comercial studios in the neighborhood called Amoreiras, Ithaka wrote a poem called, The End Of The Earth Is Upon Us and some minutes after completion read it live on top of a Naughty By Nature instrumental. A couple of months later, he recorded a demo of the song in Manchester, England with original music. And about eight months after that, the electronic music group Underground Sound of Lisbon, who had been hearing him read his writings on-air, invited him to rerecord The End Of The Earth Is Upon Us with their music for the B-side of a 12" vinyl single they were recording. Thru the decades the song, retitled So Get Up, has achieved a wide range of releases and remixes by international artists, but the original recording of the vocal-poem took place at Rádio Comercial in Amoreiras.^{[10][11][12][4]}

Presenters

• Pedro Ribeiro
• Vera Fernandes
• Vasco Palmeirim
• Nuno Markl
• Diogo Beja
• Joana Azevedo
• Rita Rugeroni
• Ana Isabel Arroja
• Wilson Honrado
• João Paulo Sousa
• Ana Delgado Martins
• Marta Campos
• Tecas
• Pedro Andrade
• Renato Duarte
• Filipa Galrão

Staff

• João Pedro Sousa
• Nuno Luz
• Mário Rui
• Nuno Gonçalo
• Ana Margarida
• Ana Martins
• Margarida Moura
• Patrícia Pereira
• António Dias
• Cláudia Macedo
• Paulo Miranda
• Margarida Gonçalves

From Monday until Friday

Saturday

Sunday

• Alcácer do Sal: 97.4 FM / 96.8 FM
• Aveiro: 90.8 FM
• Braga: 99.2 FM
• Bragança: 93.9 FM / 91.9 FM
• Beja: 92.0 FM / 88.1 FM
• Castelo Branco: 98.2 FM
• Coimbra: 90.8 FM
• Évora: 92.0 FM
• Faro: 96.1 FM / 88.1 FM
• Guarda: 96.1 FM
• Guimarães: 99.2 FM
• Leiria: 89.0 FM / 90.8 FM / 99.8 FM
• Lisboa: 97.4 FM
• Portalegre: 98.9 FM
• Porto: 97.7 FM
• Santarém: 99.8 FM / 97.4 FM
• Setúbal: 97.4 FM /96.8 FM
• Valença do Minho: 99.0 FM
• Vila Real: 88.9 FM
• Viseu: 88.7 FM / 90.8 FM

• Cidade
• M80 Radio

• Official site
• Live stream of Radio Comercial