Radio in the Dominican Republic turns 100 this October, and the accounting the country's broadcasters' association delivered this week fits in two sentences that almost never appear in the same paragraph. More than 90% of Dominican stations now stream online. And between 70% and 80% of the AM frequencies are completely dark.
It was at the weekly Grupo Corripio luncheon in Santo Domingo that ADORA president Rosa Olga Medrano laid out that picture. El Día ran the story in the early hours of October 8, 2026, and El Nacional covered the same meeting the same day.
The rest of the inventory came with it: more than 150 stations operating illegally or irregularly, a monthly operating cost of 300,000 to 500,000 pesos to keep a station on air, and a distribution of public advertising that leaves radio in the interior of the country in a precarious position.
The centennial is October 12 and 13, not 11 and 12
Worth fixing the date before anything else, because one national outlet got it wrong. The official centennial site confirms two days: October 12 and 13, 2026, at the Hotel El Embajador in Santo Domingo. The opening event is Monday the 12th at 6pm. The three panels run on the 13th: cultural identity at 9am, the radio that transforms at 11am, the radio of the future at 2:30pm. There is an immersive museum, an equipment trade show, working studio booths, and live transmissions from the hotel for 24 hours straight.
Diario Libre describes the same program, the same two days, the same 6pm opening. El Día printed "los días 11 y 12." It was a day off, in both directions.
The history the event is celebrating is real. The first transmission went out on October 4, 1924, from Frank Hatton Guerrero, a Dominican radio amateur born in the country, trained in the United States, and returned as an officer with the forces that occupied the territory in 1916. He broadcast under the call sign HIH and in 1926 founded HIZ. On April 8, 1928, President Horacio Vásquez opened HIX, Radio Atenas del Nuevo Mundo, the first official state station. In 1942 La Voz del Yuna came on air in Bonao and moved to Santo Domingo four years later. From it grew Radio Televisión Dominicana, the country's first television station, inaugurated in August 1951.
The number that never becomes a headline
The easy headline is streaming. At the same event Medrano explained that the Dominican diaspora stays faithful to the terrestrial waves, and that streaming is the advantage today, because that is how emigrants hear what they left behind. It is a real argument and it deserves the record.
It does not answer the question the rest of the same interview asks. In Diario Libre, Medrano draws a line between illegal and irregular. An illegal station broadcasts on a frequency it was never assigned. An irregular station holds a frequency but operates outside the area or the terms of its license. Her shortest possible example: a station licensed in Santo Domingo that decides its own frequency is national and switches on in San Cristóbal, Barahona or La Romana.
Those are more than 150 illegal stations and more than 50 irregular ones, by ADORA's count. And the real problem sits in the president's next sentence. The station that obeys the law pays five different taxes, among them the fee for use of the radio spectrum, the advances demanded by the tax authority, VAT, copyright fees and the payments owed to collective rights management organizations. The ones outside the law pay none of them.
Put like that it sounds like a police matter, and it is. What interests me is the economics. A licensed station does not sell reach, it sells a license. The difference between it and the pirate is not in the sound, which arrives identically in the ear of whoever hits play. It is in there being an owner answerable for it.
Where the document goes nowhere
Two things ADORA asked for this week that have not moved.
The first is the official inventory of licensed stations. There is an estimate of roughly 550 stations on the AM and FM bands in the country, but the formal registry has not been completed, and Medrano admits a more careful survey could turn up a larger number. Without an official list the regulator cannot say who is operating legally, and enforcement becomes a generic accusation. Guido Gómez Mazara, president of Indotel's board, has said he intends to prioritize it. A stated intention is not a finished list.
The second is the border. ADORA counts about 38 stations facing permanent interference from Haitian territory, and says there is nobody to talk to. The proposal handed to the regulator is not to open new frequencies. It is more power and better antenna placement on the ones that already exist. Her line about it is the most honest sentence in the whole interview: this is not about switching on more stations, it is about giving the zone what it actually needs.
What a small station takes from this
The centennial runs at the Hotel El Embajador on October 12 and 13, broadcasting live for 24 hours. Anyone who wants to listen can.
What I would take from it is something else. Streaming solves distribution and does not solve spectrum. A station that put 90% of its operation online reached the diaspora and, in the same year, watched its own sector celebrate the end of 70% to 80% of the AM band and the existence of more than 200 stations operating illegally or irregularly. Those are two simultaneous facts, and neither cancels the other.
There is also the bill in the middle. El Día describes what streaming invented inside every station: two work structures running in parallel, one for traditional programming, one for digital and interactive platforms, with more audiovisual staff hired. In other words, 90% streaming means nearly every station paying twice for the same production payroll.
A small station looking at the Dominican centennial should copy what was useful and skip the rest. Producing its own audio, showing up in the app and turning up in the directories is the path. Streaming without a stable encoder and without registering anywhere is just a server running. The centennial is lovely in 2026, but the number that matters to anyone on air is not the party. It is the count of who holds a frequency, because that is where the money comes from, and in the end, where staying on air comes from too.
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Sources for this piece:
- El Día — "La radio llega a su centenario con un apagón de AM y 150 emisoras ilegales", October 8, 2026
- El Nacional — "Más del 90 % de las 550 emisoras dominicanas legales cuenta con transmisión por streaming", October 8, 2026
- Diario Libre — "100 años de la radio dominicana: retos y transformaciones", October 5, 2026
- 100 años de la Radio Dominicana, ADORA's official centennial site, program and timeline