Wolfgang Fellner

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Wolfgang Fellner at the Life Ball 2013

Wolfgang Fellner (born October 13, 1954 in Vienna ) is an Austrian journalist and media maker.

Career

Racetrack Express

The son of the Salzburg historian Fritz Fellner entered the media business at the age of 14. In 1968 Wolfgang Fellner founded together with Karl Vilsecker and his younger brother Helmuth Fellner at the Bundesrealgymnasium Salzburg the “Rennbahn-Express” (the name is derived from the Rennbahnstraße in Salzburg). Produced with the simplest means, the youth magazine was soon delivered to schools all over Salzburg and after a few years read all over Austria. In 1988 he sold the magazine to the daily newspaper publisher Kurier , since 2000 it has belonged to the ORAC publishing group, which has since merged again with Fellner's company. The Rennbahnexpress appeared under the name Xpress until 2013 .

Basta

In 1983 the Fellner brothers founded the next magazine, the monthly political magazine Basta , which was based on the German magazine Stern . Basta was also sold to the courier in 1988. Fellner then worked for a year in the management of the Kurier, with the aim of having Basta appear weekly. After the Kurier Group had been sold to the German WAZ Group , the plans for that purpose were dropped and Fellner left the Kurier.

News

In 1990 Fellner spent a so-called academic year in the USA , during which he visited leading daily newspapers and magazines and developed a concept for an Austrian print medium. It was presented in 1992 as one of the first magazines in German-speaking countries whose layout had been done entirely on the computer and was called NEWS . NEWS started with a circulation of 70,000 and became a commercial success with increasing sales every year. Initially intended as a political magazine, it developed more and more into an information magazine. In 2004, according to the Austrian Media Analysis (MA) , NEWS had a reach of 1,077,000 readers.

The NEWS group

In the years that followed, Wolfgang and Helmuth Fellner founded a number of new magazines, all of which are now part of the NEWS Group, Austria's largest magazine publisher. In terms of layout, writing style and marketing strategy, they all resemble the largest paper in the house, NEWS:

  • 1995 TV-Illustrierte TV-Media (2004 according to MA 779,000 readers)
  • 1998 the format conceived as a news magazine (meanwhile business magazine , 225,000 readers),
  • 2000 the computer and internet magazine e-media (437,000 readers) and
  • 2001 the women's magazine woman (540,000 readers).

In 2001 the group merged with the Profil group and the ORAC group to form the largest magazine group in Austria. Finally, in the same year, Mediaprint bought its way from NEWS-Verlag, which, along with Kronen Zeitung and Kurier, is the strongest daily newspaper group in Austria.

Daily newspaper Austria

In January 2005 Fellner confirmed the rumor about a new daily newspaper by presenting a project team. The paper started under the name Austria with a circulation of 250,000 (up to 600,000 on weekends) on September 1, 2006. Fellner himself, his ex-wife Uschi Fellner and Werner Schima are the editors . The project operator was initially Fellner's long-time confidante Gert Edlinger, who was recruited back for the daily newspaper by the Styria Media Group . Edlinger and Fellner separated after serious differences in winter 2008. In January 2015 Edlinger returned to the management of the News publishing group (now under the management of Horst Pirker ).

With the daily newspaper project, the interests of the two publishers and brothers separated for the first time. The daily newspaper belongs to Wolfgang Fellner alone; other media holdings, including 17.9% in the News publishing group and several private radio licenses, have been held exclusively by Helmuth Fellner or his foundations since 2005.

Aerial Austria

Wolfgang Fellner owns four radio stations in Austria under the umbrella brand Antenne Österreich through the Fritz Fellner Private Foundation. These are Antenne Tirol, Antenne Salzburg , Antenne Wels and Radio Ö24 (formerly Antenne Wien).

Radio Austria

On the Austrian national holiday, October 26, 2019, the Fellner family launched the second private Austria-wide radio station under the name Radio Austria . By and large, the frequencies from Antenne Salzburg and Radio Ö24 were taken over.

TV channel oe24.tv

On September 26, 2016, oe24.TV - the first and so far only news channel of "Austria" as a linear as well as an online channel - went on air for the first time. The new television station was launched via the Internet (YouTube and its own homepage), cable, satellite and terrestrial via DVB-T2 as a 24-hour news channel. The main components of the program are morning, noon, afternoon and evening programs. In addition, there are special themed and interview programs on current events and topics that are currently moving Austria, such as "Fellner! LIVE", "Der Talk" or "Die Insider" almost daily. These include prominent, sometimes less prominent studio guests from politics, business, society and sport almost every day.

The most famous faces of the moderator team are Wolfgang Fellner himself, Nadine Friedrich and Niki Fellner.

On April 18, 2018, the managing director of oe24.tv, Tillmann Fuchs, announced that the broadcaster had acquired the secondary rights for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia from ORF. The rights package includes all games staggered as well as 8 live games of the decisive group games. The main commentator was Edi Finger Jr. Committed.

criticism

The following paragraphs are not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
See talk page.

"Fellnerism" (or "Fellnerei")

Even after NEWS was founded, it was clear that Wolfgang and Helmuth Fellner were using completely new methods when conceiving and disseminating media. Each of the magazines founded in 2000 was created on the basis of numerous demand surveys and meticulous market studies, both on the reader and on the advertising side. This attitude, in which the focus is no longer on an idea but on feasibility, has been and is often criticized.

Fellner's magazines often work with either photo montages or pictures of scantily clad women , especially when it comes to cover design . Longer running texts are rarely offered, but a large number of hit lists, graphics and tables. Although the few other magazines in Austria that do not belong to Fellner's group have adopted many of these tendencies themselves, such a design is often referred to as dubious.

From the beginning, Fellner publications were characterized by an aggressive and previously unconventional subscription policy. For the first time, NEWS offered subscription gifts, such as computers or household appliances, which are now common, and which readers can get very cheaply when purchasing an annual subscription. In this way, the number of readers could be increased enormously, and the readers could be tied to the publication for at least one year.

Another characteristic of Fellner magazines are the topic specials that appear as supplements or separate sections in the magazines, linked to a large number of topic-related advertisements. Critics have always claimed that the advertisers and not the newspaper makers are the initiators of such special supplements, so there is a mix of editorial and paid media content that is not justifiable in terms of media ethics . The Austrian press council has reprimanded the group several times for this advertising policy.

The editor-in-chief of the Viennese city newspaper Falter , Armin Thurnher , coined the term “Fellnerism” to describe all these innovative and controversial ways of working, which critics have been using since then to describe dubious journalism and the commercialization of media content. On the other hand, the objection is that the Fellner newspaper founding in Austria in the 1990s did what many publishers are trying to do: They created new jobs in the News publishing group and more than doubled total magazine sales in Austria within a decade. The new newspaper project Austria has also created new media jobs. However, the daily newspaper project was not accepted by the market as expected. The established newspapers Kronenzeitung, Kurier and Kleine Zeitung have a subscription share of well over 70% and therefore constitute a not insignificant market entry barrier. In contrast to the founding of his magazine, Fellner is blowing an icy wind here. The rumored 60 million initial loan had to be doubled. A large part of the circulation is achieved through free distributions.

Big Brother Award 2011

On October 25, 2011, Wolfgang Fellner received the Austrian Big Brother Award 2011 in the “Communication and Marketing” category. The publisher of the free newspaper Austria received this data protection negative prize for the headline “This is the incest grandpa”, the violation of the presumption of innocence and the “media execution” of an 80-year-old who was wrongly accused of incest .

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20191025_OTS0084/mit-radio-austria-startet-morgen-erstes-bundesweites-radio-seit-15-jahren
  2. ↑ http://www.radiowoche.de/fellners-radio-austria-startet-heute-oesterreichweit-auf-ukw/
  3. ↑ Football: oe24.tv received secondary rights for eight live World Cup group games - derStandard.at. Retrieved May 23, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Austrian Big Brother Awards honor Facebook critics heise online, October 26, 2011.
  5. ↑ Courier : The Winners of the Big Brother Awards , December 5, 2011 (accessed December 5, 2013).
  6. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB).



personal data
SURNAME Fellner, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian journalist and media maker
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna