On the morning of Nov. 2, 2013, with hours to go before the official launch of Tayramana FM, a 13-meter (43-foot) pipe was loosely tied to ropes and hoisted up the side of a six-story building. On the roof, a crew welded the pipe to a plate on the roof and screwed in four antennas on top. It was the last step before kicking off Yemen’s first independent English-language radio station.

“There are no skyscrapers in Sanaa,” Mohamed al-Iriani, Tayramana FM's founder, told Al-Monitor. “So I found a tall building in the center of the city, I calculated the location’s transmitting reach and I just did it myself.” Hours later, Iriani anxiously tuned in to 101.1 FM and heard his station for the first time, capping off years of persistence.

Setting up Tayramana FM, Iriani explained, required constant improvisation because there were no independent radio stations or experts to consult. Another problem was that in a stagnant economy, Iriani had to assemble enough capital to set up a studio and buy equipment. In January 2011, he saw his opportunity. “This radio station would not have existed had it not been for the Arab Spring,” said Iriani.

On Jan. 27, 2011, 16,000 protesters, frustrated by poverty and little opportunity, flooded the streets of Sanaa, demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Later that year, on Nov. 23, Saleh signed a power-transfer agreement brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council that ended his 33-year rule and set up a 90-day transfer of power to Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. In February 2012, Hadi won a referendum-style election, in which he was the sole candidate. In the ensuing months, Hadi restructured the military and inaugurated the national dialogue conference to redraft the constitution. Yet change, especially for the media, did not come swiftly.