In 1946, Mohamad Sabra succeeded Albert Adib as director of the Lebanese government-owned radio station. The succession marked an important shift from the radio being administered under French colonial rule to becoming an outpost of the newly independent Lebanese government. Under new directorship and the purview of the Ministry of Information, the radio station changed its name to al-idha‘a al-lubnanya, hired new staff, and amended its program. This paper interrogates the station’s restructuring through a micro-history of Mohamad Sabra, its first director after colonial rule. Based newspaper- and magazine articles, as well as oral history interviews conducted by the author, this paper discusses the framing of the radio as a national medium and the curation of its politics. How did radio-making change from the colonial to the postcolonial context? How did the radio station fashion its role in newly independent Lebanon? Furthermore, while Sabra’s appointment inaugurated the radio’s postcolonial era, his life story encapsulates a career in politics more largely. Born into an important Shi’a family in Burj al-Barajneh in 1916 and a lawyer by training, Sabra, who was a member of Riad al-Sulh’s Hizb al-Nida’ al-Qawmi, rose through the ranks of government. After serving as director of al-idha’a al-lubnanya, he became minister of information in the 1950s, and served as Lebanese ambassador to various countries including Senegal, Argentina, and Iran. Focusing on Mohamad Sabra and the figure of the director opens a window into examining the ways in which the radio became an institution in the larger bureaucratic apparatus of the postcolonial Lebanese state, offering individuals a career in politics. Thus, this paper examines not only the shift from colonial to postcolonial radio-making but the making of the radio into an institution of the state. Contextualizing the radio as an institution of the state allows us to interrogate the ways in which the radio became embedded in and mirrored national politics as well as how individuals like Sabra shaped postcolonial state-building.