About baden.fm

baden.fm

baden.fm is a private local radio station based in Freiburg im Breisgau, broadcasting for the whole of Südbaden — southern Baden — with a pop-based full-service programme. On air since 1 April 1989, it is one of the veteran local stations of Baden-Württemberg, transmitting from Achern and Offenburg in the north through Titisee-Neustadt in the Black Forest to Lörrach and Waldshut-Tiengen in the south, with its FM signal on 106.0 MHz also reaching into neighbouring Alsace in France and northern Switzerland from Basel to Zurich. The station operates under the slogan "alle deine Lieblingssongs" — all your favourite songs — and reaches around 170,000 listeners per day. It is owned by baden.audio gmbh, with Christian Noll serving as managing director and Stefanie Nachtigall as programme director, and it broadcasts via FM, DAB+, cable and internet.

Overview

baden.fm serves one of Germany's most distinctive broadcast areas: Südbaden, the southwestern corner of the country where Germany meets France and Switzerland. From its Freiburg base, the station covers the Ortenau district around Offenburg, the Black Forest communities around Titisee-Neustadt, the Markgräflerland and the Hochrhein towns of Lörrach and Waldshut-Tiengen — a region of vineyards, Black Forest valleys, university life and cross-border commuters. The overspill of the 106.0 MHz FM signal into Alsace and northern Switzerland gives the station a trinational audience, a rarity among German local stations, and its programming acknowledges the border region with coverage of cross-border topics.

The format is a broad pop-based companion service: favourite songs from recent decades mixed with current hits, presented with regional news, weather, traffic and entertainment. The station is licensed as Lokalsender 4 Freiburg within Baden-Württemberg's local-radio structure, the system created by the state's fundamental 1992 reform that consolidated dozens of tiny local stations into fifteen viable local broadcasters plus three regional "Bereichssender". As a commercial private broadcaster, baden.fm is financed through advertising sold to businesses across Südbaden and the border region.

History

baden.fm went on air on 1 April 1989, in the pioneering era of private local radio in Baden-Württemberg. The late 1980s had seen a proliferation of 37 small private local stations across the state, most with coverage areas too small to survive economically. The state responded in 1992 with a fundamental reform of the local-radio structure: under the "15 plus 3" formula, fifteen local stations and three regional broadcasters — Radio Regenbogen, Hitradio Antenne 1 and Radio 7 — were established as the viable core of the system, with a relicensing round in 2003 refining the structure further. baden.fm emerged from this consolidation as the designated local station for the Freiburg area, Lokalsender 4, and has held that position ever since. Its longevity makes it one of the few German local stations to have broadcast continuously from the analogue eighties into the streaming age under a single regional identity, adapting its sound and its technology without ever abandoning the Südbaden remit.

The station's history is also the history of Freiburg as a radio city. As early as 1984, the "Stadtradio Freiburg" had been Germany's first local radio experiment — a cooperation between the Südwestfunk and regional newspaper publishers that ran as a two-year trial and pointed the way toward licensed local broadcasting. baden.fm, launching five years later as a fully private station, inherited that pioneering spirit and the Freiburg audience's appetite for local radio. Over the decades the station modernized its distribution from FM-only to the full quartet of FM, DAB+, cable and internet streaming, and refreshed its branding to the current baden.fm identity with the "alle deine Lieblingssongs" positioning.

Programming

The programme is a classic full-service local radio mix built around the "favourite songs" promise: well-known pop hits from past decades blended with current songs, presented as an all-day companion for work, car and home. The broadcast day is structured around presenter-led shows in the morning and afternoon drivetime, with the music mix flowing through middays, evenings and nights. The station's newsroom is one of the larger local-radio news operations in southwestern Germany, producing bulletins through the day with reporting from correspondents across the coverage area — from the Ortenau to the Hochrhein — a depth of regional journalism that reflects more than three and a half decades of continuous local presence. Regional news is the journalistic backbone: reporting from Freiburg and the districts of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald, Ortenaukreis, Emmendingen, Lörrach and Waldshut — city politics, the university and research landscape, the Black Forest tourism economy, the wine villages of the Markgräflerland and Kaiserstuhl, and the Hochrhein's industrial towns.

Service elements are tailored to a border region: weather forecasts for the Rhine plain, the Black Forest heights and the Swiss midlands; traffic reports covering the A5 corridor, the border crossings to France and Switzerland, and the commuter routes into Freiburg and Basel; and event tips spanning the three countries, from the Freiburg Christmas market to Basel's Fasnacht and the Alsatian wine festivals. The station maintains a visible presence at regional events and partners with local festivals, reinforcing its identity as Südbaden's radio. Interviews with regional figures from politics, business, culture and sport are a regular feature.

Organization and Ownership

baden.fm is owned by baden.audio gmbh, the Freiburg-based radio company. Christian Noll serves as managing director, with Stefanie Nachtigall responsible for programming. The station is licensed by the Landesanstalt für Kommunikation Baden-Württemberg (LFK) as the local broadcaster for the Freiburg area within the state's local-radio system. As a commercial private broadcaster, it is financed through advertising, with its daily reach of around 170,000 listeners as its central sales argument to regional advertisers.

The ownership structure connects the station to the broader media landscape of southwestern Germany: Noll is also associated with the management of other stations in the region's private-radio scene. Regulatory oversight, licence supervision and programme monitoring rest with the LFK in Stuttgart under Baden-Württemberg's state media law. The station's trinational reach also shapes its commercial proposition: advertisers buy not just Südbaden but the border triangle, with the Basel metropolitan area's purchasing power making the Swiss overspill audience a distinctive selling point few German local stations can match.

Digital Presence

The station's website at baden.fm is the digital hub, offering the live internet stream, regional news articles, programme and presenter information, event tips and podcasts of selected features. The stream extends the FM and DAB+ footprint worldwide — serving the many Südbaden natives living elsewhere, cross-border commuters and the station's French and Swiss listeners beyond the FM overspill. The station is listed on all major radio aggregator apps and smart-speaker platforms.

On social media baden.fm maintains active channels with regional news updates, programme highlights, traffic information and coverage of Südbaden events from the Black Forest festivals to the Freiburg city celebrations. The website functions as a compact regional news portal, extending the Freiburg newsroom's output into text, images and video. Listener loyalty is reinforced through on-air campaigns, ticket giveaways for regional concerts and festivals, and the station's long-standing partnerships with the event organizers who shape the Südbaden calendar — from the Zelt-Musik-Festival in Freiburg to the wine festivals of the Markgräflerland. For a local station with a trinational footprint, the digital offering completes a thoroughly modern package: FM 106.0 from the Black Forest to Zurich, DAB+ across the region, and the stream and social channels carrying Südbaden's radio to its dispersed audience.