ORF (broadcaster)

Funded from a combination of television licence fee revenue and limited on-air advertising, ORF is the dominant player in the Austrian broadcast media.

One year later, a powerful transmitter, designed by the German Telefunken company, was installed on the roof of the former War Ministry building in Ringstraße in central Vienna.

Regular transmissions began on 1 October 1924 from provisional studios inside the War Ministry building that was to become known as Radio Wien (Welle 530).

On the other hand, news broadcasts only played a minor part out of deference to the Austrian press and the 'neutralism' policy of the federal government (the July Revolt of 1927 was not even mentioned).

In the course of the abolition of the First Austrian Republic and the implementation of the Austrofascist Ständestaat by Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß in 1934, the RAVAG studios were armed during the Austrian Civil War in February, as well as by the protagonists of the Nazi July Putsch, when several insurgents entered the studio and had Dollfuß's resignation announced (he actually was killed in his occupied Chancellery office).

Dollfuß's successor Kurt Schuschnigg (1897–1977) had the demolished broadcasting centre replaced by the new Radiokulturhaus building (present-day Funkhaus Wien) near the Theresianum academy in Wieden, Vienna, designed by Clemens Holzmeister (1886–1983) and erected from 1935 to 1939.

With the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany and the invasion of Wehrmacht troops in 1938, RAVAG was dissolved and replaced by Reichssender Wien subordinate to the national Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft network (Großdeutscher Rundfunk from 1939) in Berlin, where programmes were also produced from.

Only hours later, live broadcasts featured the cheering devotees of his Nazi successor Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946), the triumphant entry of Adolf Hitler in Linz the next day, and his speech on Heldenplatz in Vienna.

The RAVAG/Radio Wien transmissions were limited to the Eastern Austrian Soviet occupation zone, and as the Cold War progressed was increasingly considered Communist propaganda broadcasting.

The Western Allies could operate their programmes nationwide from Vienna, with a significantly higher popularity rating than the outdated RAVAG transmissions.

As a result, some loopholes such as removing the antenna or tuner from television sets in order to declare them "GIS-Free" and hence exempt from the GIS fee (declared legal in a report to the Austrian Parliament in 2008,[4] and confirmed as such by the Supreme Administrative Court of Austria in 2015,[5] hence creating a market for selling regular and smart TVs without built-in antennas or tuners[6]) will be closed under the new system.

According to surveys the most prominent television presenter in the country is former alpine skier Armin Assinger who is the host of the Millionen-Show, Austria's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

Former War Ministry, RAVAG seat from 1924
Front and side entrances of the Funkhaus Wien at Argentinierstraße in Vienna, today chiefly a centre for the production of radio programmes