Free Radio (Austria)

Overcoming the Monopoly in Austria

Austria's struggle for free radio frequencies started in the late 1970s and 1980s throughout the country and was intensified by different pirate radio actions. From the beginning, the political and social dimensions of these efforts were very important. In spring 1989, the European Federation of Free Radios organized a public broadcast in Vienna on media pluralism, which ended with the transmitter being confiscated. Several pirate radio initiatives founded a Pressure Group Freies Radio in 1991 and worked actively to end the broadcasting monopoly in most of Austria's federal states.

In 1989, the Radio AGORA association applied to the authorities for a local license to open a multilingual and noncommercial radio station. When it was rejected, they filed a grievance with the European Court for Human Rights. Their core argument was based on the restricted access of the Slovene-speaking minority to multilingual audiovisual media in the region, which was discriminatory and violated its media pluralism rights. The Court took up the grievance together with a grievance by Austrian commercial broadcasters, and in 1993 the Austrian national broadcasting monopoly was abolished. AGORA's argument was cited in the Court's ruling, which states that private broadcasting monopolies should be checked and that the rights and needs of specific groups of listeners and viewers should be catered for in the interests of media pluralism.

This ruling, by explicitly strengthening minority rights, went beyond earlier decisions ending national monopolies in several other European states. In 1993, the government decided on the Regionalradiogesetz (Regional Radio Act), which became the basis for the first licenses distributed in early 1995. However, except for one license in Salzburg and a second in Vienna for noncommercial radio stations, only economically powerful regional print media were given the available licenses. The rejected applicants, among them the noncommercial free radio stations, filed a grievance with the Constitutional Court, which subsequently cancelled the previously assigned licenses. After an amendment to the Regional Radio Act, in which the newly founded Association of Austrian Free Radios (VFRÖ) played a major role, a larger number of frequencies were announced (8 on the regional level and 40 on the local), and in subsequent years they increased in number again slightly.

The Austrian Community Radio Landscape

Austria has a threefold broadcast system: a strong nationwide public service, with 3 nationwide and 9 regional 24-hour radio stations; a number of commercial stations with regional licenses; and 13 free radio stations. The mandate for nationwide broadcasting gives the public broadcaster Österrischer Rundfunk (ORF; Austrian Broadcasting) priority for strong frequencies, whereas noncommercial and commercial stations only get weaker, local ones. The mountains in large parts of the country require several transmitters even for a relatively small area, a difficult and costly challenge. But even in cities, the assigned frequencies and the transmitters in place do not cover every location in their areas.

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