The most important persona in Austrian politics this summer is one that everyone publicly says should have nothing to do with politics, least of all with party politics.

It is the post of "ORF general", that is, the general director and sole managing director (male or female) of public broadcasting in Austria.

On August 10, the decision is to be made by the Foundation Council, which is the steering committee of the ORF, which is appointed by politics and social groups.

Stephan Löwenstein

Political correspondent based in Vienna.

  • Follow I follow

Anyone who sits there leads a little more than 3,000 employees and has a budget of around one billion euros. That alone shows the importance of this personnel decision. Politically, it is of course primarily about the still dominant position of the ORF in the classic television and radio segments. Every third person on television switches to one of the ORF channels. In the first half of 2021 it was even 35.6 percent, a few percentage points more, which can be attributed to the broadcast of the European football championship with Austrian participation. All the others have shares of well below five percent, whether they are private channels such as RTL, Vox, Servus TV, Puls4, ATV, Pro Sieben, Sat.1 and many, many other special interest channels or the German public broadcasters, which are also part of the portfolio in Austria ,of which ZDF is even the strongest of the “rest” with 3.9 percent. On the radio, ORF is even ahead with almost three quarters of all listeners.

Wrabetz still wants one term in office

Alexander Wrabetz has been the head of this institution for fourteen years and would like to add another term to it.

That would be the fourth, no one has been at the top of ORF for so long.

But there are more applicants, fourteen registered by the deadline last week, and theoretically more could be nominated by the Board of Trustees by the middle of this week.

The two most famous of them in business and the Austrian media landscape are already active in ORF management, Lisa Totzauer and Roland Weißmann.

Officially, all decision-makers hold the cards very close to their chest. Politicians and government employees point to the Board of Trustees, the Board of Trustees refers to the necessary objective examination of the concepts and personality profiles. The applicants emphasize that they were not campaigning, but have advertised themselves vigorously in numerous interviews and "leaked" papers. The ORF journalists, with one exception in particular, have kept a low profile over the past few weeks and, if someone suggests something behind the scenes, they definitely do not want to be recognizable in any way.

Despite all the indiscreet discretion, everyone thinks they know who the favorite of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is, namely Weißmann. And because a majority of the members of the Board of Trustees belong to the Christian Democratic ÖVP led by Kurz, Weißmann would be the favorite. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time in history if this very position threatened to become a stumbling block.