UNDER PUBLIC LAW?

YouTube premiere "From Kreisky's living room"

WOLFGANG MADERTHANER IN CONVERSATION WITH PETER LACHNIT

UNDER PUBLIC LAW?
If you don't want to talk about it, get rid of it (©Armin Thurnher)

2023 will be a fateful year for the ORF: firstly, following a ruling by the Constitutional Court, its financing must be reorganised - the current GIS fee must either be extended or replaced by a levy for all households. Or it will be financed from the federal budget in future - including annual negotiations with the government to ensure good behaviour. In addition, a digitisation amendment should remove a few of the obstacles that have been placed in the way of the public broadcaster thanks to lobbying by newspaper publishers - for example, the fact that broadcasts can only be listened to or watched for seven days.

During the coronavirus pandemic, ORF was increasingly perceived as a „state broadcaster“. It was also repeatedly said that it was determined by party politics, had bloated structures and could not manage. The new radio director Ingrid Thurnher has announced cost-cutting measures for Ö1 and the intention to turn FM4 into a kind of „Ö3 for young people“. At the same time, two ORF editors-in-chief have had to step aside, at least briefly, due to their compliance with the ÖVP and FPÖ. And the Green media spokeswoman has surprisingly shown her sympathy for financing the ORF from the state budget.

What does the future of ORF look like in this environment? What role should it play vis-à-vis the commercialised private broadcasters? And are comprehensive ORF fees reasonable for everyone?

Talking about it Wolfgang Maderthaner with the journalist and historian Peter Lachnit.
Lachnit was active in the cooperatively organised „Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik“ from 1984 and has been with the Ö1 radio programme since 1997, where he was editorial spokesperson and headed the „Diagonal - Radio für Zeitgenoss:innen“ series from 2012 to 2017. He has received the „Radio Prize for Adult Education“ three times and the Dr Karl Renner Journalism Prize in 2016.
In „Kreisky's Living Room“, he explains why he sees no contradiction in having been involved in the founding of the „ARGE österreichischer Privatverlage“ in the 1980s and advocating a strengthening of public broadcasting today.