Happy Birthday! Vox Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary
The Cologne-based channel Vox turns 30 on January 25, and the station is more popular than ever. Vox climbed to third place among Germany’s most-watched private broadcasters on average for the year 2022. Primetime shows such as “Die Höhle der Löwen” and “Kitchen Impossible” and long-running hit shows including “Das perfekte Dinner” and “Shopping Queen” contribute to the success.
On January 25, the Cologne broadcaster Vox will celebrate its 30th birthday, and the station is more popular than ever before. For the first time in the history of the channel, Vox climbed to third place among the most-watched private channels in Germany in the target group of 14 to 49-year-old viewers in 2022. Successful primetime shows such as "Die Höhle der Löwen", "Kitchen Impossible", "Mälzer & Henssler Lieferbar" and "Sing meine Song - Das Tauschkonzert" as well as the long-running hits "Das Perfect Dinner", "Shopping Queen", "Goodbye Deutschland”, “Auto mobil” and “Hundkatzemaus” have long since given Vox a permanent place in viewers’ living rooms.
In the past five years alone, the broadcaster, which launched in 1993, has received six German Television Prize awards and has been able to set new best values and records in 2022. The emigrant documentary series "Goodbye Germany" celebrated its strongest year yet, with an average market share of 8.5 percent . This year's season of “Grill den Henssler Sommer-Specials” and “Guidos Deko Queen” were also able to celebrate all-time best values. Vox has also long been successful via streaming: numerous Vox shows such as “Kitchen Impossible”, “Sing meine Song” and “Die Höhle der Löwen” are popular on the streaming platform RTL+. And with RTL+ highlights such as “Weil wir Champions sind” or the award-winning documentary series “Stern Crime: Der Alptraummann”, Vox has also had success among linear viewers.
After several years of development, the new private broadcaster Vox (Latin: voice, language) launched on January 25, 1993, at 5 p.m. and was able to reach more than 60 percent of German households at that time. "We can't reinvent television," said then program director Ruprecht Eser of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", "but we can make television serious and entertaining." In 1999, the logo from the early days, a red dot, became a red sphere, the trademark and identification of the station to this day. In the almost 30 years that have passed since the launch, more than 12.7 million program minutes have accumulated in the Vox archive. If the content were still stored on magnetic tape, it would be almost 75,000 kilometers long.
The longest-running Vox show is the car magazine “Auto Motor Sport TV”, which launched on October 29, 1995 and is known today as “Auto mobil”. A total of 1,375 episodes have been broadcast over the past 27 years. “Hundkatzemaus” comes in second place among the longest-running shows. The popular pet magazine, which has now aired 1,065 episodes and has featured 3,948 segments, went on the air on November 17, 2001. Third place goes to "Das perfekte Dinner ": the daily cooking documentary premiered on March 6, 2006 and earned Vox its first German TV award in 2007. The documentary “Goodbye Deutschland – Die Auswanderer” was broadcast for the first time on August 15, 2006. It now has a total of 523 episodes and is therefore fourth among the longest-running Vox shows. And fifth place goes to the styling docutainment show “Shopping Queen”, which has been sending women all over Germany on shopping sprees every weekday since January of 2012. On October 2, 2014, the show received the German Television Prize.
Vox also has a lot to offer its viewers in the anniversary year. The station will be airing the four-hour documentary “Die fantastischen Vier – Helden des Hip-Hop” at the beginning of January. In addition, viewers can look forward to new shows such as "The Big Job Switch", “Herz an Bord – Frisch verliebt auf hoher See ", "Song Clash" and a four-hour documentary on DJ Bobo's 30th stage anniversary and 30 years of Eurodance. Of course, Vox is also showing new episodes of the popular shows "Die Höhle der Löwen", "Kitchen Impossible", "Grill den Henssler", "First Dates Hotel" and the anniversary season of "Sing meine Song - Das Tauschkonzert".
