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The media landscape in Austria

Austria's media landscape is a special case in Europe. Like elsewhere in the EU there are power monopolies and strong processes of concentration, but for some years now the rise of right-wing populism, which is often ascribed to the influence of the dominant tabloid Kronen Zeitung, has been putting the country's political centre and media under pressure. EU scepticism as well as xenophobic and Islamophobic tendencies define public debate.

Schloss Schönbrunn
Foto: Reham Alhelsi, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-nc-sa/2.0

In supplying the Austrian public with TV channels, news magazines and quality newspapers with excellent feature pages and far more international coverage, Germany also contributes to making Austria a special case. Only in recent years have the nationally broadcast commercial television channels - ATV (2000), Austria 9 TV (2007) and Servus TV (2009) - joined the public service broadcaster ORF on the market.

Three groups control most of the Austrian media market: ORF, the Mediaprint group (with the tabloid Kronen Zeitung, commonly known as Die Krone, the country's only nation-wide commercial radio station Kronehit and the daily Kurier) and the Styria Media Group (with the daily Die Presse), which belongs to a private foundation with close ties to the Catholic Church. More than 40 percent of Austrians over 14 read Die Krone. The future of this mass-circulation newspaper has been unclear since the death of its publisher Hans Dichand in June 2010. Dichand is reputed to have helped several Austrian heads of government to power, most recently the Social Democrat Werner Faymann. Prior to his election Faymann published an open letter to Dichand in the tabloid in which he announced that his party would adopt a more EU-critical course.

The era of party newspapers ended in 1986 with the bankruptcy of the social-democratic newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung, which was particularly influential during the post-war period when the country was controlled by the occupying forces. The left-liberal daily Der Standard and Die Presse - Austria's longest established newspaper which has softened its conservative stance in recent times - are regarded as the country's quality newspapers. However they are read by just 5.6 percent (Der Standard) and 3.7 percent (Die Presse) of Austrians. There is no sign as yet of an Internet readership that could put an end to the reign of the tabloid style of Die Krone, the free newspapers and the mass-circulation paper Österreich which was founded in 2006.

This country's media at euro|topics