If you’ve ever tuned into COSMO on a long train ride or while chopping onions in your kitchen, wanting to listen to more integral and diverse popular music than the generic pieces occupying many major radio waves, you already know: COSMO isn’t just a radio station. It’s one of the last remaining platforms in German public broadcasting where migrant voices are not just tolerated, but centered. It’s the sound of linguistic multiplicity, of diasporic realities in stereo. And now? COSMO was the one on the chopping block.
No Space Like COSMO
COSMO offers a space where diversity in all its complexity can simply exist, which is not just a rarity in the public German radio landscape but the absolute exception. It’s where Turkish trap coexists with Kurdish folk, where Afrobeats get contextualized in German, where queerness, Blackness, exile, joy, and rage are narrated by the people who live them. And it does all this without resorting to the easy spectacle of “diversity” as decoration. COSMO isn’t multicultural wallpaper. It’s a battleground for representation — and it’s winning!
In the last couple of days, however, COSMO’s case of possible restriction and eradication of its linear programming was center topic in many conversations about the German government silencing under-represented voices. After the chief ministers of the federal states approved a reform package in October, concerning considerable funding cuts for public broadcasting, COSMO was named as one of the 17 radio channels “eligible” to be eradicated.
This push to eradicate COSMO radio’s broadcasting presence, and instead only offer it in digital form, came amid sweeping debates around the future of public broadcasting in Germany, where ARD and ZDF — the country’s two main publicly funded media giants — are facing mounting political pressure to “streamline” operations. But let’s not kid ourselves: this isn’t just about budget spreadsheets. The loudest calls for funding cuts are coming from conservative and right-wing parties like the CDU and AfD, who frame multilingual, migrant-centered programming as “niche” or “ideologically biased.” In reality, what they’re trying to defund is a cultural lifeline for communities they’d rather render invisible. COSMO, with its unapologetic internationalism and refusal to cater to sanitized mainstream tastes, is an easy target for those eager to “neutralize” public media — and that makes its potential disappearance not just a financial decision, but a deeply political one.
The People Make It Work — Never the Government
After the ARD directors shared their final decision to cut COSMO’S radio presence entirely on June 24th and 25th, the online protest under the hashtag #saveCOSMOradio and a petition amassing over 55.000 signatures in only a matter of days showcased the public’s attitude on the matter. So, to no thanks to the ARD/ZDF group realizing their fault in even considering the implications of restricting COSMO’s reach, the decision was hastily paddled back. And without the raised voices and dialog, COSMO’s fate could have been sealed.
Because let’s be clear: Even if the worst has been prevented, it is outrageous that it even was a possibility. What’s happened should concern anyone invested in what pop culture can do — as a mirror, as a megaphone, as memory work. Axing COSMO wasn’t neutral. It was a political decision, made palatable through bureaucratic language, but aimed squarely at cultural dissent.
Remember, your voice is valid. And it not only deserves to be heard but you have every right to make yourself heard. Always.
Beyond the Erasure
The potential erasure of COSMO, under the guise of restructuring or cost-saving, isn’t just a sad little media story. It’s symptomatic of a broader political agenda: sanitizing public discourse, re-centralizing whiteness in cultural production, and quietly rolling back the few spaces where polyphonic, post-migrant perspectives have found airtime.
The question isn’t whether German public media could afford COSMO. The question is: Who gets to narrate Germany? And when migrant communities — speaking in accents, code-switching across genres and geographies — start shaping the answer: Why does that trigger institutional fragility?
Pop is political, always. But sometimes the politics isn’t in the lyrics — it’s in the silence you’re left with when the music stops.
So follow COSMO on Instagram and tune in the COSMO radio waves.