TV in Austria

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An ORF interview in Vienna (2009)
HD recording of a sporting event (2008)

Television in Austria is a central part of the media landscape in Austria ; from a cultural as well as from a social, political and economic perspective. While there were 193,046 registered television viewers in 1960, the number rose to 3,251,697 in 2010.

history

Channel

ORF regional studio Tyrol

There are currently more than 160 television channels in Austria, depending on how they are counted. Most of them are commercial in nature. About half of the market is controlled by public broadcasters (e.g. ORF 1, ORF 2, ORF III), the other half by domestic and foreign private broadcasters.

Public broadcasters

The public service broadcasters, originally intended as sources of information, provide the population with an increasing amount of entertainment in addition to basic knowledge. The program is financed mainly with the income from the GIS fees, to a lesser extent also through advertising income .

The Austrian regional program of the state broadcaster is broadcast daily at 7 p.m. The central element of the program window is the program Bundesland heute , which deals with news, topics and events from the respective federal state. From Monday to Friday, the Tyrol edition of Bundesland heute will be supplemented with the program Südtirol heute . Various magazines are regularly installed in the window after the regional weather forecast. An example of this is Servus, Srečno, Ciao on ORF 2 Carinthia.

Together with SRF , ARD and ZDF , ORF operates the culture-oriented television channel 3sat, which was launched in 1984 and is free of advertising .

Commercial television channels

The first private broadcaster that could be received throughout Austria went on air at the beginning of 2000 under the name ATVplus, now ATV , with an audience rating of around 7.6% in prime time. Private television in Austria is relatively strongly influenced by the companies ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE and RTL Group . The largest ProSiebenSat.1 Media channels, ie Sat.1 Austria , ProSieben Austria , kabel eins austria and Puls 4 , had a total market share of around 18% in 2010. In free-to-air television in Austria, in addition to the public broadcasters, there are a large number of private broadcasters that do not benefit from the GIS revenues and are therefore financed exclusively through advertising revenues and competitions; for this reason, the advertising share is also significantly higher than that of the ORF . There are also specialty programs such as music channels (e.g. gotv ), information channels (e.g. Servus TV ) and regional channels (e.g. tirol tv , RE eins , Innsat.TV , LT1 ).

Non-commercial television channels

Since 2005 there has been non-commercial, advertising-free television in Austria. The non-profit companies are mainly financed from grants. In terms of content, they are located in the field of culture, subculture, foreign languages, youth and media education and fulfill tasks of free expression of opinion for the population. With Okto , dorf and FS1 , three stations broadcast in Vienna , Linz and Salzburg , are organized in the Association of Community Television Austria as interest groups and are subject to their own charter, which defines its principles in terms of structure and content.

Pay TV / Pay TV

In addition to Sky Austria , the younger competitor austriasat is also one of the most important providers of pay TV . Pay TV for Austrians abroad does not exist, but the ORF broadcasts the ORF 2 program unencrypted via ORF Sat or, since 2004, via the successor channel ORF 2 Europe , which only broadcasts teletext during a program without pan-European rights .

Market shares

broadcasts

journalism

The central broadcast of both ORF full programs is the news format Zeit im Bild . 26 correspondents work for ORF in a total of 16 offices worldwide. The largest private news network is that of AustriaNews , which broadcasts thirteen news programs a day. Correspondents are less important here, but the level of journalism is comparable to that of ORF.

Entertainment programs

Nowadays there is a wide range of Austrian entertainment formats. Quiz shows , crime shows and magazines are particularly popular . At the time of the opening of the Iron Curtain , talk shows were hugely successful. Particularly noteworthy formats are listed here:

Series, series, soaps

Shows

Children's programs

Important Austrian children's programs are for example:

  • Research Express : Knowledge broadcast since 2004, awarded the Romy 2004
  • Tom Turbo : since 1993, fantasy series with the character of a crime thriller, also broadcast in Germany
  • Puppet theater : since 1957, the world's oldest children's TV program
  • 1, 2 or 3 : since 1977, quiz show for children, created in collaboration with SF and ZDF

Sports

Major sporting events such as the FIS Ski World Cup and the Olympic Games are almost entirely broadcast by Austrian radio . However, more and more private broadcasters are securing the rights to various major events. So snatches Puls 4 ORF the rights to the Champions League from 2012, also Servus TV begins with the Servus Hockey Night Live with the broadcasting of sports.

Various fringe sports are broadcast on ORF SPORT + . Recently, however, there has been a lack of clarity as to which events the ORF is allowed to show in this special-interest channel and which not, as the ORF law does not provide for the transmission of “premium sports” to ORF SPORT +. Therefore, the National Council decided on a new regulation, which says that sports events for which the premium character is not clear, the ORF should offer the rights to the private broadcasters. If this is not the case, the ORF may broadcast.

people

Alfons Haider
Armin Assinger

The following people are of great importance to the television world in Austria:

Moderators, journalists and show masters

speaker

Directors

ORF director Alexander Wrabetz (2005)

actor

technology

The ORF regional studio in Lower Austria

The most common transmission routes are satellites and cable networks. Terrestrial distribution is also common, but only digitally. The conversion to this digital DVB-T standard was completed in 2011. Digital satellite transmission via DVB-S has already established itself successfully. DVB-C is only rarely used in cable television, as is television over the Internet. Practically all standards are used, but not every transmitter broadcasts in all modes. For a considerable period of time, the ORF has been broadcasting in high definition quality, like various other stations later. However, many of the formats broadcast are only PAL and have to be upscaled. Only a few programs are produced in native HD. Many private broadcasters use platforms such as HD Austria to transmit their high-definition programs. Many in-house productions by the public broadcasters are also offered in two-channel sound.

financing

With a few exceptions, every Austrian citizen with an operational television or radio set is obliged to pay radio license fees. The proceeds go to the Info Service Gesellschaft mbH (abbreviated: GIS) fees, which are primarily used to finance public television and radio programs.

Commercial broadcasters maintain themselves largely through television advertising . Further financing options are call-in competitions , donations , the sale of products (home shopping channels ) or value-added telephone services (e.g. astrology channels).

Television awards

The best-known television prizes are the Axel Corti Prize and the Erich Neuberg Prize, the Television Prize of Austrian Adult Education and the Romy , which is awarded annually by the daily newspaper Kurier .

consumption

For 2011, there were just under 3.27 million reported television users in Austria; Accordingly, 89.4% of private households had a valid television license, with reception density being lowest in Vienna with 77.6 TV licenses per 100 households and highest in Burgenland (99.7%). Around two thirds of Austrians watch TV for longer than 120 minutes a day. The cable network operator UPC Austria speaks of a peak value here; only French, Dutch and Belgian broadcasters would watch television longer. 16% of the population in Austria does not sit in front of the television every day, for a large number of people (84%) it is inconceivable to go without it for a day; however, only one in 50 would stay at home in order not to miss a certain program. Around half of all households have a second television set, around a fifth have three sets, and every tenth household has at least four.

Others

  • Austria is a Eurovision participant.
  • Every major Austrian broadcaster offers Teletext , EPG and ShowView numbers.
  • Outside of broadcasting activity, at least the nationwide active broadcasters are represented with websites , some of which accompany the program in great detail.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ RTR - TV broadcaster by program name
  2. STATISTICS AUSTRIA - radio and television
  3. Austrians watch TV often and for a long time - Vor der Telze - Familie - krone.at ( Memento from February 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive )