DZRH 666

DZRH is the flagship radio station of the Manila Broadcasting Company (MBC) and the longest running AM radio station in the Philippines.

DZRH started out as KZRH in 1939. It call sign started with letter K, like radio stations in the U.S. West Coast. RH stands for Radio Heacock, after H. E. Heacock, an American jewelry dealer and original owner of H.E. Heacock Company, the largest chain of department stores in the Pacific Rim.

At the time KZRH started broadcasting, H. E. Heacock Company was already owned by Samuel Gaches, a Stanford graduate who came to Manila in 1900. In 1939, KZRH was the fourth commercial radio station to operate in Manila.

Then under the management of Bertrand Silen, KZRH aired musical variety shows, comedy skits and short newscasts. KZRH found itself as an advertising medium: Apart from 15­minute blocktime sold to advertisers, commercial spots mixing announcements with music were also produced.

Two years later, in 1941, KZRH opened a sister in Cebu City: DYRC.

During World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army took over the radio station and used it as a propaganda outlet. It was through KZKH that the Japanese announced the surrender of U.S. and Philippine soldiers. 

In 1942, it aired the ” Voice of Freedom,” announcing the fall of Bataan. That broadcast became called a classic in radio journalism, after then radio anchor Norman Reyes announced, “Bataan has fallen… But the spirit that made it stand, a beacon to all liberty-loving people of the world, cannot fall.”

At the end of World War II, Silen sought the help of National Broadcasting Company in New York to secure new transmitters. The Elizalde family, meanwhile, was asked to finance the new operations. Ambassador Joaquin Miguel Elizalde and his brother, Manuel, named the network Manila Broadcasting Company.

In 1949, after the Philippines' independence from US, KZRH became the first radio station to simulcast nationwide, in AM and short wave frequencies. In the same year, the letter K was replaced with the letter D in accordance with a Switzerland Radio Commission policy assigning the letter to Philippine radio stations, giving birth to what is now known as DZRH.

MBC's congressional franchise to operate and own radio and TV stations in the country for a period of 25 years was granted in 1994. In 1996, under the “One Nation, One Vision” initiative of its current Chairman, Fred J. Elizalde, DZRH expanded its network to cover as much as 97 percent of the entire country. The station currently airs it broadcast simultaneously via satellite and through its 18 relay stations strategically located throughout the country. 

Its programs are also accessible online through www.dzrhnews.com. In 2008, DZRH ventured into television to expand its listenership and viewership, and aired its first 24-hour broadcast over Dream (Channel 10) and and Cablelink (Channel 9). RHTV is accessible nationwide via its provincial cable operators and at Cignal TV (Channel 18) and Cable link Metro Manila (Channel 3).

The Elizalde family currently owns more than 60 percent of the shares of MBC, through Elizalde Holdings Corporation.