Hit Radio FFH exists because a group of Hessian newspaper publishers decided they would rather build a competitor to state broadcasting than watch it operate unchallenged. Nearly four decades later, that founders' project has grown into one of Germany's largest private radio stations, still broadcasting out of the spa town of Bad Vilbel.
Founded by the Press, Not the State
The station was established on March 15, 1988, backed by 50 shareholders, the majority of them Hessian newspaper publishers looking for a foothold in the newly liberalized private radio market. It took a year and a half to get on air: the first broadcast went out at 4:55 in the morning on November 15, 1989, from studios in Frankfurt-Rödelheim, under the name Radio/Tele FFH before the rebrand that gave the station its current identity. The operating company, Radio/Tele FFH GmbH & Co. Betriebs-KG, still runs the station today.
Two Songs That Marked a New Studio
On April 25, 1995, the station rebranded as Hit Radio FFH under the slogan "Einfach näher dran," simply closer to it, a tagline it has kept ever since. The bigger break with the past came in 2001, when the station left its original Frankfurt studios for a purpose-built broadcast house in Bad Vilbel. The move became local radio legend for how it was staged: the last song played from Frankfurt was Andrea Bocelli's "Time to Say Goodbye," and the first track out of the new Bad Vilbel studios was Madonna's "Music," a deliberate handoff from one home to the next.
A Comedy Cellar That Keeps Winning Awards
FFH's programming leans on comedy as much as chart music, and it has the trophies to show for it. The station's in-house comedy team, built around the FFH-Comedykeller format created by Dirk Haberkorn and Boris Meinzer, won the Deutscher Radiopreis for Best Comedy in 2017 and again in 2019. One of its longest-running characters, Anke's Tanke, is performed by Offenbach-born moderator Evren Gezer, who has kept the bit going for years and picked up a Best Moderator nomination at the 2026 Deutscher Radiopreis for her work across FFH's comedy lineup.
Broadcasting From a Roman Spa Town
Bad Vilbel, FFH's home since 2001, carries far more history than its role as a Frankfurt commuter suburb suggests. The town's mineral springs were already valued in Roman times, and a Roman villa with a bathhouse and mosaic floor was uncovered there during railway construction in 1848. Its oldest surviving landmark is the Wasserburg, a moated castle complex on the River Nidda that traces back to a donation made to the monastery of Lorsch in 774, before French troops burned it down in 1796. The "Bad" was only added to the town's name in 1948, once its healing springs earned it official spa town status, giving Hit Radio FFH a genuinely old backdrop for a station built on very modern chart pop.
Still Simply Closer
From a founders' group of competing newspaper publishers to a broadcast house sitting on top of Roman ruins, Hit Radio FFH has stayed close to the slogan it adopted in 1995. Three decades on, it is still the station Hesse turns on for chart hits, traffic updates from its regional studios, and the comedy bits that keep winning it national awards.