About Absolut Oldie Classics

Absolut Oldie Classics

Absolut Oldie Classics is a German nationwide private radio station broadcasting an oldies-based adult contemporary format built around the greatest hits of the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Based in Garching bei München in Bavaria, the station reaches listeners across the whole of Germany via digital terrestrial radio on the second national DAB+ multiplex, supplemented by satellite transmission and a worldwide web stream. It belongs to the Absolut Radio family of stations operated by Antenne Deutschland, the company that built and runs the second national DAB+ platform, and it is financed entirely by radio advertising. Its music lineup puts a deliberate emphasis on the 1980s while also drawing on standout songs from the seventies and nineties, positioned between pure decade stations and broader oldies formats. After several years as a largely unmoderated music service, the station added a prominent weekday morning show in January 2026 hosted by the well-known television and radio presenter Katrin Müller-Hohenstein. In May 2026 the programme was renamed Absolut Classics, a change the operator presented as reflecting the station's matured on-air identity.

Overview

Absolut Oldie Classics is distributed almost nationwide through the second DAB+ Bundesmux, the privately operated national digital radio multiplex that went on air on 5 October 2020 with initially 71 transmitter sites and has been extended continuously since then. At launch, the technical coverage was designed to reach around 67 million residents of Germany, making the station one of the first generation of truly nationwide private music programmes to arrive via the new platform. Alongside DAB+, the programme is carried on satellite and can be received through a web player, the Absolut Radio app and third-party radio aggregators, so in practice it is available to anyone with an internet connection, far beyond German borders.

The format is classified as oldie-based AC: a modern, adult-oriented pop presentation wrapped around evergreen hits rather than current chart music. The station describes its musical identity with the slogan "Great, greater, greatest Hits", and in practice the rotation centres on the biggest singles of the 1980s, flanked by selected classics from the 1970s and 1990s. This positions Absolut Oldie Classics a little younger in sound than traditional oldies services that reach back into the fifties and sixties, but less rigidly decade-bound than competitors that confine themselves exclusively to the eighties. Hourly news bulletins punctuate the music flow, and the station carries regionalised advertising windows typical of private German radio. As with the other members of the Absolut Radio family, the service is free to receive and funds itself through advertising sold both in the linear broadcast and in the station's digital audio inventory.

History

The roots of the station lie in the Absolut Radio project launched on 1 August 2011, when the company Absolut Digital GmbH & Co. KG put a new nationwide music station on the air via the first DAB+ Bundesmux. That original programme later lost its terrestrial slot, continued as an internet-only stream from 2013, and was renamed Absolut musicXL in 2019. In parallel, Absolut Digital built up a portfolio of genre streams, and on 6 November 2017 one of those streams began as the dedicated oldies and classic-hits channel that would become Absolut Oldie Classics. For its first years it existed purely online, a nonstop music service without a terrestrial footprint.

The decisive turning point came in 2020. Antenne Deutschland, the joint venture of Absolut Radio and Media Broadcast, had secured the licence to build and operate the second national DAB+ multiplex, and in the course of that process Absolut Digital GmbH & Co. KG was taken over by Antenne Deutschland. To produce the new wave of nationwide programmes, the group constructed new studios in Garching bei München, north of Munich, which became the broadcast centre and company seat; the long-established Regensburg operation remained the home of the sister programme Absolut Relax. On 5 October 2020 the second Bundesmux launched with four Absolut-branded programmes on board: Absolut Bella, Absolut Hot, Absolut Top, which later became Absolut Top 2000er, and Absolut Oldie Classics. The oldies channel thus moved from a web-only existence onto nationwide digital terrestrial radio in one step, and its music format was fine-tuned for the broader audience, settling on a core of seventies and eighties hits.

The following years brought steady professionalisation. From 15 April 2021 the Garching studios produced the full set of Absolut programmes. In 2022 the Absolut Radio stations jointly launched a YouTube channel with regularly uploaded video content, extending the brands beyond audio. For a long time Absolut Oldie Classics remained a largely unmoderated service, a deliberate choice the operator linked to the move into the new broadcast centre. That changed at the start of 2026: on 5 January 2026 Katrin Müller-Hohenstein, one of Germany's most experienced broadcast presenters with more than two hundred editions of the ZDF sports programme "Aktuelles Sportstudio" and coverage of nine football World Cups and European Championships plus six Olympic Games to her name, took over a new weekday morning show from 6 to 9 a.m. The appointment was presented by Antenne Deutschland CEO Mirko Drenger as a major step in building the station's community. Finally, on 1 May 2026 the programme was renamed from Absolut Oldie Classics to Absolut Classics, with refreshed sound design accompanying the new name.

Programming

The centrepiece of the current schedule is the weekday morning show hosted by Katrin Müller-Hohenstein, airing Monday to Friday from 6 to 9 a.m. under the "Greatest Hits" banner. The show blends the station's core music with personality-driven presentation, drawing on the presenter's long broadcasting experience and her stated personal affinity for the music of the 1980s, which she has described as the era whose songs she recognises within seconds. Around the morning show, the programme continues its music-led format through the day, with the playlist curated around the biggest hits of the late seventies to the early nineties and a pronounced eighties emphasis that the operator says distinguishes it from older-skewing rivals such as Schwarzwaldradio and the Oldie Antenne while remaining broader than single-decade formats like 80s80s.

A signature feature is "Tape Tuesday", a weekly segment in which Müller-Hohenstein and content creator Nils Baumgart, known as Bunkerkante, listen back to old mixtapes and share the memories attached to them. Episodes of the feature are available for catch-up listening on the Absolut Radio website, reflecting the group's broader on-demand strategy. News bulletins air at the top of the hour, providing national and international headlines in compact form, and the station carries the usual service elements of German private radio, including weather and traffic information. The music presentation is supported by a refreshed station sound design introduced alongside the 2026 rebrand, and the overall tone is upbeat and nostalgia-positive, aimed at adult listeners who grew up with the music of the seventies, eighties and nineties.

Organization and Ownership

Absolut Oldie Classics is operated within the Absolut Radio group of Antenne Deutschland, the company that holds the licence for the second national DAB+ multiplex and runs its broadcast centre in Garching bei München. The group's origins go back to Absolut Digital GmbH & Co. KG, the Regensburg-based company behind the original Absolut Radio project, which was absorbed into the Antenne Deutschland structure during the build-out of the second Bundesmux in 2020. Today the Absolut Radio family comprises six nationwide programmes: Absolut Relax, Absolut Hot, Absolut Bella, Absolut Germany, Absolut Top 2000er and Absolut Classics, the renamed Absolut Oldie Classics, alongside a range of online-only streams. Publicly listed management roles for the station have included Francie Petrick in executive management and programme directors Claudia Dinges, Christina Zacher and Kevin Schieber at different times, while Mirko Drenger has served as CEO of Antenne Deutschland.

The business model is straightforward commercial radio: the programme is free to receive and financed by advertising. Beyond classic spot advertising in the linear programme, Antenne Deutschland markets digital audio campaigns across the group's premium streaming inventory together with the marketer ad.audio, reflecting the growing importance of the stations' web and app audiences. Media regulation for the nationwide service falls under the German interstate media framework for national private broadcasters, and the DAB+ transmission itself is provided through the multiplex infrastructure that Antenne Deutschland operates in cooperation with Media Broadcast.

Digital Presence

The station's online home is the Absolut Radio website at absolutradio.de, where Absolut Oldie Classics, now Absolut Classics, is presented alongside its sister programmes with a live web player, programme information and catch-up audio for features such as "Tape Tuesday". A dedicated Absolut Radio app carries the live streams of all the group's stations to smartphones, and the programmes are also listed on the major radio aggregator platforms and smart-speaker directories, making the stream accessible worldwide. Since 2022 the group has operated a joint YouTube channel where video content related to the stations is published regularly, giving the audio brands a visual extension.

On social media the Absolut Radio umbrella maintains profiles that promote the individual programmes, including the classic-hits station, with presenter content, music features and behind-the-scenes material from the Garching studios. The station's playlist and now-playing information are published online in near real time, a standard feature that supports the music-discovery habits of its audience. Taken together, the website, app, on-demand audio, video channel and social profiles form a digital ecosystem that the operator has been expanding deliberately, treating the DAB+ broadcast as the flagship distribution path while building direct digital relationships with listeners through streaming and on-demand content.