About Tide 96.0

Tide 96.0

Tide 96.0 — now branded on air as TIDE.radio — is a non-commercial citizen and training radio station in Hamburg, Germany, broadcasting on FM 96.0 MHz and DAB+ digital radio. Together with its sister service TIDE.tv, it forms the "Bürger- und Ausbildungskanal" (citizen and training channel) operated by the non-profit Tide GmbH, a subsidiary of the Hamburg Media School. Founded in 2004 as the successor to Hamburg's dissolved open channel, the station gives ordinary residents free access to airtime and production facilities while training the next generation of media professionals. It is financed from a small share of Germany's broadcasting licence fees and is supervised by the Medienanstalt Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein.

Overview

Tide is best understood as two channels in one institution: a citizen radio in which volunteers produce their own programmes, and a training operation (the TIDE.akademie) that teaches radio, television, and online production through courses, apprenticeships, internships, and voluntary service placements. The organisation is divided into three areas: TIDE.tv (television), Tide.Radio (radio), and the TIDE.akademie (training). Its studios sit on the Kunst- und Mediencampus at the Finkenau in Hamburg-Uhlenhorst, in the middle of an interdisciplinary cluster that includes the Hamburg Media School, the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW), and the Academy of Fine Arts.

Unlike the classic open-channel model it replaced, Tide is legally responsible for everything it broadcasts — the station, not the individual producers, holds editorial responsibility and can therefore exercise influence over programme content. The programme itself is strictly non-commercial: advertising is banned, with only tightly controlled programme sponsorship permitted ("This programme is presented by..."). The stated mission is to enable everyone in Hamburg to build media competence, develop editorial concepts for radio and television, and produce programmes themselves.

History

Tide's creation was an act of media policy. The Hamburg open channel had existed since 1988, but after the CDU-FDP Senate government amended the state's media law on 2 July 2003, the channel had to cease operations on 30 June 2003 and was dissolved. The opposition SPD called the closure a "state sanction against a public broadcasting offer" and criticised the fact that Tide — and in part its parent organisation, the Hamburg Media School — would be financed from broadcasting fees, the same fees the old open channel had received.

After a few weeks of silence on 96.0 MHz, a test operation began: a loop of citizen programmes individually approved by the first editor-in-chief, Carsten Meincke, built from shows by former open-channel producers who volunteered their material. The early loop included "Urbanissimo" (music), "Hitradio RCS" (entertainment), "Pink Channel" (magazine for homosexuals), "Radio Triangula" (intercultural magazine), "Crazy Station", "Dance Alarm" (DJ mixes), and "Stahlbrothers 80s". Because there was initially no transmission line to the transmitter and only a rudimentary studio — without computers and without sound insulation — programmes were partly produced externally, burned onto MP3 CDs, and carried up to a player in the Heinrich-Hertz-Turm, where a CD ran in a weekly loop before being replaced with an updated version.

Regular operations began on 1 April 2004, when the previously secret name "Tide 96,0" was officially unveiled. On 1 September 2007 Werner Eggert succeeded Meincke as head of the citizen and training channel. After a vacant period in early 2011, Claudia Willke — a documentary filmmaker with public-broadcasting experience — took over the management in May 2011, and since 1 December 2019 Alexander Drechsel has served as managing director and editor-in-chief. The radio leadership has been held since the station's founding by Peter Gehlsdorf, co-founder and chairman of Pink Channel Hamburg and, since October 2010, chairman of Tide's works council; Tide TV has been led by Kolja Hook since 2009. On 27 April 2009 Tide celebrated its fifth anniversary and officially moved into a new studio building shared with the Hamburg Media School, the Miami Ad School, university departments, and the city's multimedia office.

In 2016 the station faced an existential debate: when Germany's broadcasting fee commission recommended a 30-cent fee reduction, Tide's works council warned that in the worst case the entire radio operation — citizen radio and training editorial staff — would have to be wound up, arguing that the station already operated at the cost limit despite more than 300 active volunteer producers. The station's management described Tide 96.0 as having become the largest citizen radio station in Germany, with more citizens producing more programmes in better quality than any other citizen broadcaster.

Programming

Tide.radio's schedule is built around citizen productions: programmes made by Hamburg residents across music, culture, community affairs, and minority interests, supplemented by the work of the station's training editorial teams. Since August 2007 the station has broadcast nearly 24 hours a day on weekdays. Until spring 2024, the local commercial station Hamburger Lokalradio took over the 96.0 frequency on Sundays from 6:00 to 24:00 and on Tuesdays from 0:00 to 6:00; that arrangement ended with the station's insolvency.

The training side of the operation is a programme factory in its own right. Tide's TV training editorial team — trainees, volunteers, federal voluntary-service participants, and apprentice media designers — learns television by doing, producing the 30-minute television magazine "Hamburg immer anders!" every three weeks under the guidance of an experienced editor, from research and shooting to editing and sound. Since June 2010 Tide TV has promoted and documented royalty-free (GEMA-free) broadcast formats and documentaries on YouTube, launching its official channel in October 2010. The cross-media online magazine TOM trains participants who have been at Tide for at least a year to plan and produce stories across platforms.

The TIDE.akademie offers continuing education courses in radio, television, and online content creation and distribution, plus a holiday academy for schoolchildren aimed at introducing young people to media work. Formal training paths include the three-year dual apprenticeship as a media designer for image and sound, internships in post-production, radio operations, TV production, and the youth editorial team "SchnappFisch", federal voluntary service, a voluntary social year in culture, and traineeships in media-pedagogy and video journalism.

Coverage and Audience

Tide.radio (the "96.0" frequency tag was dropped from on-air naming in 2018) broadcasts terrestrially in Hamburg on FM 96.0 MHz and on DAB+ digital radio, and is available worldwide as an internet stream in AAC, Ogg Vorbis, and MP3 formats, with repeats of the week's programmes filling the stream's off-air hours. The FM transmitter power was reduced in the course of 2018 after a change of antenna operator brought less favourable transmission characteristics, so that the terrestrial signal now covers only the Hamburg city area; the DAB+ launch on 1 January 2018 was positioned as the future-proofing measure compensating for the lost FM reach, broadcasting around the clock. The station's technical reach is reported at around 2.4 million listeners in the FM era.

Tide TV is available around the clock in Hamburg's cable networks — analogue on channel 34 with Wilhelm.tel/WillyTel and channel 21 with Vodafone Kabel Deutschland (sharing the channel with BBC World and Voyages Television), plus digital cable (DVB-C) — and as a livestream. The TV schedule runs Sunday to Thursday from 12:00 to midnight and Friday and Saturday from 12:00 to 2:00 a.m.

As a non-commercial citizen broadcaster, Tide is not part of commercial audience measurement. Its public value is measured in participation: hundreds of volunteer producers, a constant flow of trainees, and a role as Hamburg's largest platform for citizen-produced broadcasting.

Ownership and Funding

Tide is operated by the Tide GmbH, recognised as a non-profit, whose sole shareholder is the Hamburg Media School. The Hamburg Media School therefore receives a share of Hamburg's broadcasting fee revenue for its work in citizen radio and television. The supervisory authority is the Medienanstalt Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein. The financing model — citizen broadcasting paid for from the general broadcasting fee — has been politically contested since the station's founding, but it is the basis of Tide's independence from advertising and commercial interests.

Digital Presence

The station's online home is tidenet.de, carrying livestreams of radio and television, the programme schedule, the academy course catalogue, and information for prospective producers. The official TIDE YouTube channel, launched in October 2010, documents the station's television output, with additional channels promoting GEMA-free formats for reuse by other broadcasters. The cross-media online magazine TOM extends the training editorial teams' work onto digital platforms. Programme information, producer contacts, and the works council's communications are all maintained through the station's own web presence, which styles the operation as "Hamburgs Communitysender und Ausbildungskanal" — Hamburg's community broadcaster and training channel.