With regards to television, local or regional broadcasters have been insignificant for a long time in Austria. All national broadcasters are Vienna-based except for ServusTV (based in Salzburg). Non-commercial broadcasting projects have become a stable part of the spectrum over the past years; however, they tend to telecast niche programmes bound to specific local (mainly urban) areas (e.g., FS1, Okto TV).
On the contrary, the Austrian radio market has traditionally been dominated by regional channels (see Tables A1–A9 in Appendix 1). Besides the national channels of the public service broadcaster ORF, only Kronehit (since 2003) and Radio Austria (since 2019) hold national licences. In all nine provinces, the national public service mainstream programme Ö3 leads with a market share, ranging between 29 per cent (Vienna) and 39 per cent (Lower Austria). The regional public service programmes (Ö2) surpass private competitors, with market shares ranging from 15 per cent (Vienna) to 48 per cent (Carinthia). Several small private channels are part of trans-regional chains (Antenne, Arabella). Therefore, media concentration in the regional radio market varies across regions, from 56 per cent (Vienna) to 92 per cent (Carinthia) at the level of specific channels. At the company level, concentration is more severe: while the CR3 (companies) dominate 88 per cent of the market in Vienna and 86 per cent in Tyrol, they exceed 90 per cent in all other Austrian regions, peaking at 99 per cent in Carinthia and Burgenland.
High concentration has always been common for the regional structures of the Austrian newspaper market (Seethaler & Melischek, 2006: 254). With a general decline in audience reach for most newspapers in the past ten years, the problem persists. Nevertheless, daily newspapers are an important source of information to the Austrian population at a regional level: as of 2018, it varied between 57.7 per cent (in Vorarlberg) and 71.1 per cent (in Carinthia) of the local population being reached by a newspaper regularly (see Table 9). In Vienna, Styria, Carinthia, Upper Austria, and Salzburg, two comparably powerful newspapers have split the local market (one of them being the national boulevard daily Kronenzeitung). In Vienna and Lower Austria, the free-of-charge daily Heute has become the main competitor to Kronenzeitung. Compared to 2008, Kurier lost its strong position in Vienna and Tyrol, supposedly due to competition from free-of-charge papers in urban areas of these regions. Some regions such as Carinthia faced more drastic changes due to the closure of titles (Neue Kärntner Tageszeitung, ceased 2014). Other regions have one dominant daily newspaper (see also Table 9). Kronenzeitung is still market leader in two of the nine provinces (compared to four in 2008), being second only to regional newspapers in six further provinces (compared to four in 2008), and reaching up to 46.7 per cent of the local population. Compared to data from the 2010 MDM, all major newspaper titles faced declines in audience reach. This was moderate in some regions (e.g., Burgenland, Salzburg, and Vorarlberg) and more acute in others (such as Vienna, Lower Austria, and Tyrol), even the big player Kronenzeitung witnessed a fall in its reach, for instance, from 520,000 in 2008 to 329,000 in 2019 in Upper Austria (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Media-Analysen, 2019b–j; Arbeitsgemeinschaft Media-Analysen, 2008:146–193).
Only in the most western region of Austria, Vorarlberg, is Kronenzeitung not the most significant newspaper in the local market. However, in Vorarlberg itself, the two dominant daily newspapers (Vorarlberger Nachrichten, Neue Vorarlberger Tageszeitung) are published by the same media company, which leads to an extremely concentrated local market. This company, Vorarlberger Medienhaus,not only reaches more than half of the regional population with its print products, but also dominates radio and online media at a regional level. In Tyrol, Moser Holding AG plays an important role as a regional market power. Here, Tiroler Tageszeitung is the leading daily newspaper, reaching 43.3 per cent of the local population. Additionally, Moser Holding AG owns the leading private radio channel (Life Radio) and several monthly and weekly magazines in the region.
[supsystic-tables id=11]
