About sixx

sixx

sixx is a German free-to-air commercial television channel for women, owned by ProSiebenSat.1 Media and broadcasting from Unterföhring near Munich. Launched on 7 May 2010, it targets young female viewers with a schedule of US series, films, reality formats, and lifestyle programming. Its lowercase styling and feminine positioning make it the women's channel of the ProSiebenSat.1 portfolio, complementing the male-targeted ProSieben Maxx and the older-skewing Sat.1 Gold.

Overview

sixx is ProSiebenSat.1's channel for young women. While the flagship Sat.1 serves the broad family audience and ProSieben targets young viewers of both sexes with American fiction, sixx focuses specifically on female viewers — particularly in the fourteen-to-thirty-nine demographic — with a schedule built around US drama series, romantic comedies, reality television, and lifestyle formats. The channel broadcasts free-to-air nationwide and is financed by advertising.

The channel's positioning fills a deliberate gap in the group's portfolio: where sixx serves young women, Sat.1 Gold (launched 2013) serves women over forty, giving ProSiebenSat.1 dedicated channels for the two poles of the female audience. This demographic precision — matching RTL Deutschland's parallel strategy with RTLup — reflects the broader segmentation of German commercial television in the 2010s.

sixx operates from Unterföhring as part of the Seven.One Entertainment Group, sharing infrastructure, sales, and streaming distribution with its sister channels. Its programmes stream through Joyn, the group's streaming platform.

History

sixx launched on 7 May 2010, emerging from ProSiebenSat.1's women's media activities. The group had acquired Feeem Media GmbH in June 2008 — renamed Fem Media GmbH that September — which operated the women's portal fem.com; in 2010 the Fem television offering was rebranded as sixx, with Fem Media taking over operation of the channel's homepage at sixx.de. The launch made sixx one of the first German television channels conceived from the start as a women's interest brand with integrated online operations.

The channel grew steadily in its early years. In the 2014 financial year it closed with a record market share of 1.4 percent among fourteen- to forty-nine-year-olds, rising to 2.5 percent in its core target group of women aged fourteen to thirty-nine — year-on-year growth that ProSiebenSat.1 highlighted as evidence of its demographic-channel strategy working. The group's annual reports credited sixx, alongside the newer Sat.1 Gold and ProSieben Maxx, with driving the portfolio's growth and attracting dozens of new television advertising customers.

Over the 2010s sixx refined its schedule around its signature genres — American series with strong female appeal, romantic films, and reality formats — and integrated its offering with the group's streaming platforms, first 7TV and then Joyn.

Programming and Content

US series are the backbone of sixx's schedule. The channel broadcasts American drama series, dramedies, and sitcoms with particular appeal to young women — relationship dramas, workplace comedies, and mystery series — many of them premiering in Germany on sixx or finding dedicated audiences there after runs on the group's larger channels. Its acquisitions strategy focuses on series with female protagonists and female-skewing storylines.

Films fill primetime and weekend slots: romantic comedies, dramas, and feel-good films dominate, alongside the occasional thriller or comedy with broad female appeal. Themed film evenings and seasonal programming — Valentine's Day, Christmas — are ratings drivers.

Reality and lifestyle formats complement the fiction: dating shows, makeover formats, cooking and home programming, and celebrity reality reflect the genres young female viewers favour. The channel's German originals and acquired formats in these areas give the schedule local flavour alongside its American imports.

The fem.com heritage survives in the channel's integrated online offering: lifestyle content, advice, and community features that extend the television brand into the digital spaces where its young female audience spends its time.

Coverage and Audience

sixx broadcasts free-to-air throughout Germany via digital terrestrial television (DVB-T2), cable, and satellite, and its signal reaches Austria and Switzerland, where dedicated versions serve those markets. Its programmes stream live and on demand through Joyn. Its official website is sixx.de.

The channel's audience is young women, particularly in the fourteen-to-thirty-nine demographic, within which it has built a strong position among Germany's digital specialty channels. Its viewers are among the most socially active in German television: sixx's series and reality formats generate substantial social-media discussion, and the channel's brand resonates with an audience that encounters television across linear, streaming, and social touchpoints. Detailed ratings are published by the industry's measurement bodies.

sixx's cultural footprint includes its role in bringing American series with female appeal to German audiences and in normalising the women's-interest channel as a mainstream commercial proposition.

Ownership

sixx is owned by ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE and operated within the Seven.One Entertainment Group, the group's entertainment division headquartered in Unterföhring. Its sister channels include Sat.1, ProSieben, kabel eins, Sat.1 Gold, ProSieben Maxx, kabel eins Doku, and the pay-TV channels kabel eins classics, Sat.1 Emotions, and ProSieben Fun.

ProSiebenSat.1 Media is majority-owned by MediaForEurope (75.61 percent of common shares) and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Within the group, sixx shares infrastructure, advertising sales (through Seven.One Media), and streaming distribution (through Joyn) with its sister channels.

As a commercial broadcaster, sixx is licensed by the state media authorities and operates within Germany's dual broadcasting system.

The Women's Channel Segment

sixx operates in a television segment that German broadcasters deliberately constructed in the 2010s: the demographic women's channel. ProSiebenSat.1 built a two-channel offering — sixx for young women, Sat.1 Gold for women over forty — while RTL Deutschland answered with RTLup (originally RTLplus) for women over forty-five. Each channel serves genres its target group already watches on the generalist channels, concentrated into a dedicated schedule with tailored advertising.

The strategy rests on viewing realities: women watch more television than men on average, and female-skewing genres — relationship dramas, romantic comedies, lifestyle and reality formats — deliver loyal, predictable audiences. sixx's focus on the fourteen-to-thirty-nine female demographic targets the most commercially coveted segment: young women whose consumption choices influence household spending and who are highly active on social media, amplifying the channel's programmes beyond the broadcast.

Competition within the segment is indirect rather than head-to-head: sixx and RTLup/Sat.1 Gold serve different age groups, so the rivalry plays out in the broader battle for female viewing against the generalist channels' own female-skewing primetime. sixx's advantage is its American series pipeline — relationship dramas and comedies with female protagonists that the group's larger channels cannot always accommodate — and its integrated online heritage from fem.com, which gives it a digital fluency its rivals have had to build from scratch.

Digital Presence

sixx's digital presence is centred on sixx.de, its official website — operated since the channel's launch by Fem Media GmbH, continuing the fem.com portal heritage — with full episodes streaming through Joyn, where the channel's series, films, and reality formats are available live and on demand.

The channel maintains active social media channels, distributing clips, trailers, and highlights to its young female audience on the major platforms. Its series fandoms are highly engaged online, and the channel's social strategy treats platforms as integral to its distribution rather than as an afterthought.

For German speakers abroad, Joyn's streaming offering makes much of sixx's programming available internationally, subject to the rights restrictions that apply to acquired American series and films. The channel's integrated television-and-online model — inherited from its fem.com origins — positions it for an audience that moves fluidly between screens.