Radio Siegen has spent decades doing something a lot of local stations have given up on: actually sounding local. It went on air on June 2, 1990, after being licensed that January as the fourth of what are now 45 local radio stations across North Rhine-Westphalia, and it remains the dedicated voice of the Siegen-Wittgenstein district in southwestern Germany's Südwestfalen region, the country's third-strongest industrial area (Wikipedia).
From a Newsroom to a Deconsecrated Church
For 27 years, Radio Siegen's editorial team and studios sat inside a purpose-built broadcast house on Obergraben in the city center. Since November 1, 2017, the station has operated out of a very different kind of building: a listed, heritage-protected former church, the Dreifaltigkeitskirche St. Trinitatis, on Tiergartenstraße (Wikipedia). It's an unusual home for a modern newsroom, but one that fits a station whose ownership structure is itself rooted in the community it covers, run jointly by local newspaper publishers, the Kreis Siegen-Wittgenstein, and the city of Siegen.
Nine Hours of Local Programming a Day
Radio Siegen produces up to nine hours of locally originated programming daily, covering everything a resident of the Siegerland actually needs to know, before handing the remaining airtime over to Radio NRW's shared regional framework program (Wikipedia).
- Local and regional news, covering Siegen-Wittgenstein alongside broader NRW and national stories.
- Kreisliga sports coverage, following local amateur football and regional athletes directly.
- Service content, job listings, blood donation drives, and exhibition listings tailored to the district.
- Original podcasts, including a sports show, "Spiel, Satz und Siegerland," produced in-house.
The True Crime Podcast That Went National From a Local Station
Radio Siegen's biggest crossover hit didn't start in a studio at all. "Blutrausch," hosted by two self-described true crime nerds from the Siegerland, Fabian and Daniel, began as a hobby project during the Corona pandemic, digging into real criminal cases from the local area. Four years later, it's a fixture on Radio Siegen's own schedule and regularly lands in the top 50 podcast rankings, with listeners tuning in from more than 100 countries (True Crime Love).
Even the Birdhouse Gets a Livestream
Not every local touch is quite so serious. Radio Siegen also runs a nistkasten, birdhouse, livestream, giving listeners a live camera feed into an active nesting site (Radio Siegen). It's a small detail, but exactly the kind of thing a station only bothers with when it's genuinely embedded in its own community rather than just broadcasting at it.
Why It's Worth a Spot in Your Rotation
Radio Siegen is proof that hyper-local radio can still produce something with national reach, a true crime podcast recorded by two hobbyists that now outperforms shows with real production budgets, all while still finding room for birdhouse livestreams and Kreisliga scores. It's German local radio doing exactly what the format is supposed to do.
Stream Radio Siegen Free on Radio Shuffle
Tune in to Radio Siegen on Radio Shuffle, no account, no app, no fee. Press play and hear the Siegerland broadcasting from a former church.