About Hamburg 1

Hamburg 1

Hamburg 1 is a private regional television channel for the city of Hamburg and its surrounding metropolitan area in northern Germany. Founded in 1995, it is one of Germany's longest-running city television stations, broadcasting local news, talk, sports and service programming via cable and IPTV. After a period of financial difficulty that led to insolvency proceedings in 2022, the channel was taken over in January 2023 by the Berlin-based Godd Media Broadcast group and continues to operate as Hamburg's dedicated local TV service.

Overview

Hamburg 1 is a classic German "Ballungsraumfernsehen" — metropolitan-area television. Its editorial mission is to cover the city of Hamburg the way national channels cannot: with daily local news, borough-level reporting, Hamburg politics and business, the city's sports clubs, its harbour and maritime life, and its cultural scene. At its peak the channel reported a technical reach of around 1.9 million households, with cable distribution extending beyond the city limits to Kaltenkirchen, Büchen, Harsefeld and Lüneburg.

The channel is received via DVB-C cable (Vodafone Kabel Deutschland, in the digital line-up since 2013), IPTV (Telekom MagentaTV since 1 December 2011, willy.tel) and its own internet livestream. Programme direction is led by editor-in-chief Michael Schmidt.

History

Hamburg 1 went on air on 3 May 1995, founded by Helmut Keiser, entering a local television market that was still young — private local TV in Germany had only become possible after the liberalisation of broadcasting in the 1980s. From 1995 to 2023 the channel was based at the Multimedia Centre Rotherbaum in Hamburg.

The station established itself with a schedule built around local news and Hamburg personalities, and for many years it was a fixture of the city's media landscape. Like many German local TV stations, however, it faced structural economic pressure from fragmenting advertising markets and the migration of local advertising to digital platforms.

In 2022 insolvency proceedings were opened for Hamburg 1. In January 2023 the channel was acquired outright by Godd Media Broadcast, a Berlin-based media company. The new ownership structure gives 85 percent to Dursun and Seyhan Yigit and 15 percent to Denis Pronin. Godd Media Broadcast also operates the stations TV Berlin and bw family.tv in Baden-Württemberg, creating a small group of regional television services.

Programming

Hamburg 1's schedule is anchored by several long-running local formats:

• Frühcafé: the local breakfast television, airing Monday to Friday from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., with news, weather, traffic reports (including live cameras on major commuter routes), local features, service information and interviews, presented by Marco Ostwald.
• Hamburg 1 Aktuell: the news programme, broadcast half-hourly from 5 p.m., presented by Lisa Reimnitz, Ute Hinrichs and Monika Zöllner.
• Nachgefragt: a daily-topic interview format in which Herbert Schalthoff questions figures from business and politics.
• Schalthoff live: a political talk show airing Tuesdays at 8:15 p.m., moderated by Herbert Schalthoff.
• Rasant: the sports magazine, Mondays at 8:15 p.m., presented by Uli Pingel and Nico Pommerenke.
• Tischgespräch: Susan Stahnke in conversation with prominent guests.
• Menschen Marken Medien: an expert panel on media and brands with Peter Heinlein.
• Erfolge bevorzugt: a talk show on career, relationships, finance and vitality with Martina Hautau.
• Betrifft Hamburg: a talk format on Hamburg's future.
• Blaulicht: a police magazine; Carport: a car magazine; Hamburg Maritim: a magazine on shipping and the harbour; Mensch Wirtschaft!: entrepreneur interviews with Prof. Heinz Lohmann.
• Music and culture formats including Ellermanns Hitparade, Hamburg 1 Lounge (club and music scene), Kuno's (oldies, jazz, blues, pop and rock), Kino News TV (cinema magazine) and Eisfieber (covering the Hamburg Freezers ice-hockey team) and the Hockey Magazin.

The full programme schedule is published on the channel's website.

Coverage & Audience

Hamburg 1 broadcasts to Hamburg and the surrounding region, with cable carriage reaching into Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony (Kaltenkirchen, Büchen, Harsefeld, Lüneburg). Distribution is via cable (Vodafone), IPTV (MagentaTV, willy.tel) and online livestream. As a local advertising-financed channel, its commercial model rests on Hamburg businesses — retail, services, real estate and events — buying airtime in a strictly local environment that national channels cannot replicate.

Ownership

Since January 2023, Hamburg 1 has been wholly owned by Godd Media Broadcast of Berlin, with Dursun and Seyhan Yigit holding 85 percent and Denis Pronin 15 percent. The group also operates TV Berlin and bw family.tv (Baden-Württemberg). The channel's supervisory media authority is the Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein media authority (MA HSH).

Digital Presence

Hamburg 1 operates the website hamburg1.de with a livestream of the programme and on-demand clips of its news and magazine formats. The channel maintains social-media presences for news distribution and audience interaction, and its programmes are listed in electronic programme guides. The website also serves as the channel's advertising sales portal for local businesses.

Market Position

Hamburg 1 is part of Germany's local-television sector — around 100 licensed local and regional TV services — which operates under a distinct regulatory and economic regime supervised by the state media authorities. In Hamburg it competes for local attention with the NDR's Hamburg Journal, the city's newspapers (notably the Hamburger Abendblatt and Hamburger Morgenpost) and digital local news portals. Its survival through insolvency and takeover in 2022–2023 illustrates both the fragility and the perceived continuing value of city television: national platforms cannot replicate genuinely local journalism, and a group owner with several regional stations can share costs across markets. Under Godd Media Broadcast, Hamburg 1 continues as the city's dedicated television voice, nearly three decades after its 1995 launch.

Local Television Economics

Hamburg 1's business history illustrates the economics of German city television. Local TV stations are financed overwhelmingly by regional advertising — spots bought by car dealers, furniture stores, real-estate firms and event organisers who want to reach exactly the Hamburg audience and no one else. This model worked well in the 1990s and 2000s but came under sustained pressure as local advertising budgets migrated to Google, Facebook and digital classifieds.

The 2022 insolvency filing was therefore not an isolated event but part of a sector-wide consolidation in which many German local stations have sought group owners, merged newsrooms or reduced original output. The Godd Media Broadcast takeover follows a pattern seen across the industry: a small group bundles several city stations — in this case Hamburg 1, TV Berlin and bw family.tv — to share technology, administration and programme acquisitions while keeping local newsrooms in each city. Whether this model can stabilise local television in the long term remains an open question in German media policy, where the state media authorities and policymakers debate dedicated support mechanisms for local journalism.

Editorially, Hamburg 1's value proposition rests on presence: its cameras at Hamburg's ports, football grounds, election counts and neighbourhood festivals produce coverage that neither national television nor the NDR's regional magazine can match in volume. The Frühcafé breakfast show, the half-hourly Hamburg 1 Aktuell bulletins and the Schalthoff political talk give the channel a daily rhythm of city-focused journalism that has kept it on air — through ownership changes and financial crises — for thirty years. Its programme listings, published on hamburg1.de and in electronic guides, remain the reference for Hamburg-specific television. For the city's media history, Hamburg 1 represents the persistence of an idea first realised in 1995: that Germany's second-largest city deserves its own television channel, made in the city, for the city.