December 1994

The British Far Eastern Broadcasting Service (later the BBC Far Eastern Station), grew out of a British wartime propaganda station in India which was run by the British Ministry of Information's Far Eastern Bureau. When Bureau HQ moved from Ceylon to Singapore at the end of 1945, some of the personnel resumed broadcasting on a small scale from that city, calling themselves the Far Eastern Service of the South East Asia Command. Power was increased a few months later, and the station soon moved into its own Thomson Road studios. Originally the staff was small and worked long hours under intense conditions, but the station grew both technically and programatically until January 1948 when an economic crisis in England caused a cutback. The BBC took over in August of that year, and the station became the now famous BBC Far Eastern Station.

FEBC's "Call of the Orient" medium wave transmitter, originally KZAS (soon changed to DZAS), went on the air on June 4, 1948. Shortwave was added a the form of tropical band transmitter DZB2 and HF senders DZH6, DZH7, and DZH8.