Here and Now is a pioneer of free French radio. It broadcast for the first time on June 21, 1980 at 10 p.m., from an apartment in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Pirate radio at the time, it was seized twice before the famous release of the airwaves in 1982, when it could legally broadcast. From this time, the radio practiced the "free antennas", that is to say that it offered its listeners the possibility of telephoning and passing the message of their choice to the antenna, including the FM transmitter is directly connected to an answering machine. A host is there to ensure a certain moderation and to avoid slippages, even if the radio adopts at the end of 1980 an even more radical form of freedom, removing the host from the equation. This disturbing approach at the time will be worth to Here and Now a non-renewal of its license to transmit, which will lead its founders Didier de Plaige and Guy Skornik to start 2 hunger strikes. In the 1990s, listeners would join radio staff squarely in a 40-day hunger strike outside CSA headquarters. The radio was finally authorized to broadcast again in May 2001. Since 1997, it had already been broadcasting worldwide thanks to the Internet, a technology then still in its infancy. Since 2014, it has been broadcasting on FM 24 hours a day, in the Ile-de-France region.
David Abbasi joined Didier de Plaige in 1984 and began his collaboration with the radio as an economic partner, helping the association to emerge from its financial crises. From 1985, he began to host "Soleil de Perse", the first Persian radio station in France, 6 years before RFI radio in Persian.
From 1986, following a proposal by Didier de Plaige, David Abbasi began to host programs in French on Tuesdays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Morgane Awesta, from the age of 5, became a host-announcer on David's shows. At the age of 12, she is the youngest journalist on the radio "Here and Now" and she has interviewed great personalities such as the senator minister Henri Caillavet, the president of Parliament Jean-Louis Debré, Pierre Marion boss of DGDI, Maître Golpa and Pierre Henri DG of FTA, as well as others.
Since 2019, Didier de Plaige has appointed Morgane Awesta as director of the radio and a year before, he informed his children by email that "the host Morgane is well placed to differentiate between the sincere and the opportunists. Her father, David Abbasi, will know how to make the voice of wisdom heard, and respect for the founding spirit." (Didier, May 3, 2018 - 2:18 p.m. addressed to his children).
Even in the last minute of his life, the philosophy president Didier de Plaige confided his total confidence in his director of the antenna, Morgane Awesta. In Didier's only will, which was recorded at his request at the hospital and which exceeded ten hours, he addressed these words to his children: "Morgane is my goddaughter and the governor-commander and the director of the radio 'Here and Now'…" and just 30 hours before his death, at 11 p.m. on December 24, 2022, he called Morgana to wish her a Merry Christmas.
