BB Radio Oldies is one of the specialty channels run by BB Radio, the private broadcaster that has served Berlin and Brandenburg since launching on December 31, 1993. The Oldies channel itself is a more recent addition, arriving in March 2016 as part of BB Radio's expansion into a full lineup of genre-specific streams, sitting alongside dedicated 80s, 90s, rock and party channels under the same umbrella.
What makes the station's home base worth knowing about is where it actually broadcasts from: Medienstadt Babelsberg in Potsdam, a media campus built on top of the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. Filming began there in February 1912, and by 1926 the site had built what's now known as the Marlene Dietrich Halle for Fritz Lang's Metropolis, one of the most influential films in cinema history. A year later, Babelsberg built the first sound stage in Europe. Today the site is home to roughly 4,600 people working across 145 companies in film and media, and BB Radio Oldies broadcasts its vintage playlist from right in the middle of it.
A Regional Station With National-Level Backing
BB Radio is jointly owned by Burda Broadcast Media and Studio Gong, two Munich-based media companies, giving the network resources well beyond what a typical regional station might have. Its main channel operates as a Hot AC format reaching around 92,000 listeners on an average weekday hour, across a potential audience of 6.5 million people in the Berlin-Brandenburg area, with a specific programming commitment to local news from individual Brandenburg regions rather than just Berlin.
That local identity carries over into the Oldies channel, which functions as a companion to the main station rather than a separate operation entirely, letting listeners who want vintage hits skip straight to them without losing the sense of place that defines BB Radio's broader programming. The network has also leaned into personality-driven content in recent years, most notably giving comedian Torsten Sträter his own music-and-storytelling show in 2021, a signal that even a station built partly on nostalgia hasn't stopped experimenting with format.
Where Old Hits Meet Older History
For a channel dedicated entirely to the past, there's something fitting about BB Radio Oldies broadcasting from a site with more film and media history packed into one address than almost anywhere else in Germany. The vintage hits playing through the speakers are, in a small way, in good company.