The NRJ Group is a Frenchmultimedia group based in Paris. Its founders are Jean-Paul Baudecroux and Max Guazzini. Since its foundation in 1981 as a French pop musicradio station it has grown and evolved to become the NRJ Group. NRJ is the most popular radio station in France with 6,159,000 listeners daily. All stations of NRJ Group carry around 40 minutes every hour of non-stop hits. NRJ Group currently has 33 FM stations and around 220 internet stations and 12 mobile applications, along with replay TV and a host of other services.
The NRJ Group grew from one radio station to a brand of corporate commercial radio stations across Europe. It has stations in France, Germany, Egypt, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, among others. NRJ plays current and newly released music for young audiences. Their slogan and promise is "Hit Music Only". The majority of NRJ-branded stations are operated by the NRJ Group; however, some are licensed, such as the Bulgarian version, which is operated by Communicorp. Within France the NRJ Group operates four separate radio stations: NRJ, Nostalgie, Chérie FM and Rire & Chansons. They also operate the NRJ 12 and Chérie 25digital terrestrial television stations, in addition to NRJ Paris and NRJ Hits music television stations in France. In 1989, NRJ became listed on the Paris Stock Exchange Secondary Market and has continued to climb, reaching the First Market in 2000 after regrouping all of its assets into the NRJ Group. In French, the pronunciations of NRJ and Energy are - almost, except for the first vowel which is respectively open-mid and close-mid - identical, and sounds very similar to the English word Energy.
International
With its pan-EuropeanNRJ/ENERGY stations, the Paris-based NRJ Group has challenged the European radio market by being significantly different from other market players like the Luxembourg-based RTL Group, and SBS Broadcasting or Stockholm-based MTG. Since June 6, 2006 NRJ has been operational in Lebanon, further expanding its reach and influence. On July 6, 2009, NRJ announced it would license its brand to Astral Media, owner of Canada's Énergieradio network, consisting of 10 regional stations in Quebec, along with a national broadcast as Énergie2 on Satellite Radio in Canada and in the United States. This is the first North American expansion for NRJ. Since the mid-1990s, NRJ has licensed its 24/7 programming stream out of Paris, to Japan's largest cable system, Usen Corporation. All of NRJ's international operations are concentrated on a contemporary hit radio station while its competitors tend to create local radio brands with various radio formats, thereby taking advantage of their audience's local identity. NRJ is today broadcasting in over 20 countries, mainly throughout Europe, but also in North America, South America and several overseas territories of France. The following is a list of current and defunct international stations, including France. NRJ also operates four 24-hour hit music television channels, in Lebanon, France, Switzerland, and Belgium. In order to extend friendlier terms to customers and vendors NRJ sacrificed improvements in revenues and margins this explains the year-on-year earnings decline experienced in 2017.
