Radio Hessen On Astra

Sky Radio Hessen, the commercial radio station through which U.S.-Australian media entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch last year entered the German radio market, has finally put its long-planned satellite distribution into reality. The Kassel-based channel uses the subcarrier 7.38 MHz on transponder 64 (10.936 GHz V) of TV channel Neun Live on Astra (19.2 degrees East longitude). Sky Radio Hessen transmits in the Astra Digital Radio (ADR) format – a digital technology which a large number of German radio broadcasters use to both reach listeners and feed cable headends and terrestrial transmitters.

“We are particularly happy for the uncountable number of satellite radio fans which have flooded us with e-mails in the past weeks, encouraging us to transmit Sky Radio Hessen via satellite,” Managing Director Tom Adams said in a statement.

Sky Radio Hessen, which can be found on the Internet at http://www.skyradio.de, has been broadcasting since Dec. 24, 2001, from studios in Kassel’s city centre. Besides the Astra transmission to DTH homes, listeners can also tune into the channel on local FM frequencies and in cable networks in German regional state Hessen.