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Antonia Stabinger, Editor FM4 #32 How long should entertainment be audible? Last year I asked a class of teenage girls and boys what radio they listened to. Instead of an answer, they looked at me with eyes emptier than their smartphone battery after five hours of Tiktok binging. Once again, it became clear to me that the possibility of transferring high-quality ORF content to online formats should not be forgotten.

At Radio FM4, for example, this transfer has been underway for a long time. Here, the medium of podcast offers a wonderful complementary channel to the linear on-air programme. Once broadcast, formats such as discussion programmes, comedy columns, interviews, special series on music, film or gender end up as podcasts on the homepage. There - and everywhere where podcasts are available - they can then be played around the clock.

The digital world has become even more important in times of cultural shutdowns and stage closures. For me as an artist, it has been a fantastic opportunity to produce radio plays on Radio FM4 since the beginning of the pandemic. Together with the cabaret artists and writers Berni Wagner, Leopold Toriser and Elias Hirschl, a whole season of half-hour, surreal-comic mockumentary reports was created from the pent-up creative energy under the collective name "The Magic Eye". These radio plays were broadcast on air as well as podcasted online and have thus become a corona-compliant internet theatre.

However, there is a lot of competition online. High follower numbers generate reach. Since the uploaded ORF contributions have to be deleted again and again according to the law, it is very difficult to build up a regular audience. If this were to be changed in the future, the quality advantage over other formats due to the excellent production conditions could be used even more strongly and sensibly. Because at the latest as an artist in a pandemic, I now know with certainty: everything makes much more sense with an audience.