About Bremen Next

Bremen Next

Bremen Next (own spelling Bremen NEXT) is the young-audience offering of Radio Bremen, the public broadcaster of the state of Bremen. Launched on 17 August 2016, it targets young people in Bremen, Bremerhaven, and surrounding areas — on the internet and social media with music and lifestyle topics, and on the radio with a musical focus on hip-hop and electronic music. With 128,000 listeners (Media-Analyse II/2026), it is the younger, more urban sibling of Bremen Vier.

Overview

Bremen Next broadcasts via internet livestream, DAB+ in Bremen and Bremerhaven, FM (96.7 MHz in Bremen, 92.1 MHz in Bremerhaven), and its social media channels. Programme director is Felicia Reinstädt. The programme is financed partly through broadcasting fees and partly through radio advertising. The Radio Bremen intendant is Yvette Gerner (since 1 August 2019).

History

Bremen Next began on 17 August 2016 — Radio Bremen's answer to the fragmenting youth audience. By the mid-2010s, the broadcaster's youth strategy needed updating: Bremen Vier, launched in 1986, served the broad young mainstream, but the younger, urban, hip-hop-oriented audience — the generation raised on YouTube and streaming — needed its own offering. Bremen Next was conceived from the start as a cross-media brand: not just a radio station, but an internet and social-media presence covering music and lifestyle.

The Cross-Media Concept

Bremen Next's most important innovation is not musical but structural: it was conceived as a cross-media brand from birth. The radio programme — hip-hop and electronic music on FM, DAB+, and stream — is only one pillar. The internet and social-media presence — music and lifestyle topics, videos, community — is the other, and for the target audience arguably the more important. The brand lives where young people live: on the phone, in the feed, at the concert.

This was a departure for Radio Bremen — and for German public radio generally. Traditional stations treat digital as an extension of broadcast: the stream, the podcast, the website. Bremen Next inverts the hierarchy: the digital presence is the primary product, the radio the audio companion. The programme director's remit spans both; the presenters are content creators as much as broadcasters. For a 2016 launch, aimed at an audience that had never owned a radio, the logic was inescapable.

Hip-Hop on Public Radio

The musical focus — hip-hop and electronic music — is a statement about German popular culture's centre of gravity. Hip-hop is the defining youth music of the 21st century: German hip-hop, from the Hamburg pioneers (Beginner, Samy Deluxe, Fettes Brot) to the Berlin and Ruhr scenes, is the country's most commercially successful and culturally influential genre. A public youth offering that ignored hip-hop would ignore its audience.

Bremen's own hip-hop history matters here: the city was one of German hip-hop's early centres, and the local scene — crews, battles, clubs — gives Bremen Next authentic roots. The electronic focus acknowledges the parallel tradition: Bremen's clubs, the techno and house scenes, the electronic festivals. Together, hip-hop and electronic map the urban youth soundscape: the beats of the street and the beats of the club.

The public-service justification for a hip-hop station mirrors the Schlager argument: the genre's audience deserves a publicly funded, advertising-light alternative to commercial formats — with journalistic standards, local roots, and cultural context beneath the beats.

Bremen's Urban Youth

Bremen Next's target — young people in Bremen, Bremerhaven, and surrounding areas — is Germany's most urban small-state audience. Bremen is a university city, a port city, a diverse city: the Viertel's alternative scene, the Überseestadt's creative industries, the Gröpelingen and Hemelingen districts' multicultural life. The station's lifestyle coverage — the concerts, the scenes, the styles — maps this urban youth culture.

Bremerhaven's inclusion matters: the port city, smaller and less affluent than Bremen, has its own youth culture — and its own FM frequency (92.1 MHz). The two-city offering reflects the two-city state: Bremen Next serves both, with the digital presence erasing the 60-kilometre distance between them.

The Sibling Strategy

The Bremen Vier/Bremen Next division is Radio Bremen's youth strategy in miniature: the broad mainstream (Vier) and the urban edge (Next). The 1986 station serves 14-to-49 with pop and rock; the 2016 offering serves the younger, hipper demographic with hip-hop and electronic. The overlap is intentional — the siblings share the youth remit — but the differentiation is clear: Vier is the station you grow into, Next the station you start with.

The strategy's risk is cannibalisation: two youth stations splitting a small state's young audience. The strategy's reward is coverage: no young listener lacks a public offering that speaks their musical language. With 200,000 (Vier) and 128,000 (Next) listeners, the combined youth reach is substantial for a two-city state — evidence that the sibling strategy works.

Public Money for Hip-Hop? The Remit Debate

Bremen Next inevitably raises the remit question: should licence-fee money fund hip-hop radio? The critics' case: hip-hop is commercially successful, the market provides it, public funding distorts competition. The defenders' case has three parts. First, the market provides hip-hop with advertising — the public alternative is advertising-light, a genuine choice. Second, the public offering adds what the market does not: local journalism, cultural context, the Bremen scene's coverage. Third, the remit is demographic: if public broadcasting abandons young urban audiences, it abandons its future licence-fee payers.

The debate will not be settled, but Bremen Next's existence is the ARD's answer: public broadcasting serves all demographics, including the young, the urban, and the hip-hop generation. The 128,000 listeners are the empirical defence — young people choosing the public offering voluntarily.

The Advertising Question

Unlike most Radio Bremen programmes, Bremen Next is financed partly through radio advertising — a deliberate choice reflecting the youth market's commercial value. The advertising funds the cross-media operation's digital costs: the social-media production, the video content, the community management that a pure licence-fee budget might not cover. The mix — fees plus advertising — is the NDR 2 model applied to youth: the commercial revenue supports the public-service mission.

Programming

The radio programme's musical focus is hip-hop and electronic music — the defining sounds of urban youth culture. Online and on social media, Bremen Next covers music and lifestyle topics for its young target group: the concerts, the scenes, the styles, the city. The combination — radio for the music, digital for the life around it — reflects how the target audience consumes media: audio for the commute, video and social for everything else.

Coverage and Audience

Bremen Next broadcasts on FM in Bremen (96.7 MHz) and Bremerhaven (92.1 MHz), via DAB+, and worldwide via internet livestream and social media. Its 128,000 listeners (MA II/2026) reflect the young urban audience — smaller than Bremen Vier's, but demographically distinct and digitally engaged.

Ownership and Funding

Bremen Next is operated by Radio Bremen, the public-law broadcaster for the state of Bremen and a member of the ARD, headquartered in Bremen. The programme is financed partly through the broadcasting licence fee and partly through radio advertising. The intendant is Yvette Gerner.

Digital Presence

Bremen Next's digital presence is central to its identity: the offering lives on the internet and social media as much as on the radio, with livestream, music and lifestyle content, and community engagement. Because the official domain has not been independently load-verified, the website field of this profile is left empty pending verification.