40 - Who owns the ORF?

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The global media world is in the hands of individual players, although the ownership structure of some media is more complicated than others. Essentially, however, it can be summarized: Jeff Bezos owns "Amazon", Marc Zuckerberg owns "Facebook", Bill Gates owns "Microsoft", Elon Musk owns "X". In the case of European commercial media, these are ultimately the Mohn family at Bertelsmann (including RTL), at ProSiebenSat.1 the largest shareholder is Berlusconi, in Austria Mateschitz owns the channel "ServusTV". However, the largest medium in Austria is ORF. Who owns it?

An article by Klaus Kassai from ORF's "Legal and Regulation" department.


The history of ORF is eventful and diverse in many respects. This finding also applies with regard to the title-giving question "Who owns the ORF?". It is interesting to note that Austrian Broadcasting has "lived through" various corporate forms in its past: At the very beginning there was the "Aktiengesellschaft", the RAVAG-Österreichische Radio-Verkehrs Aktiengesellschaft at the beginning of the 1920s. The Federal Ministry of Trade and Transport (21.25 %), Österreichisches CreditInstitut (21.25 %), Gewista (20.25 %), Steirerbank (20.25 %), Österreichische Anzeigen-AG (8 %) and suppliers such as Ericsson and Kapsch (10 %) held shares in the founding capital. RAVAG therefore "belonged" to these institutions.

After the Second World War, Österreichischer Rundfunk was founded as a "limited liability company", Österreichische Rundfunk Ges.m.b.H.. The federal government held 97.3% of the shares in this company and the federal states held 2.7%. This shareholding led to a corresponding influence on the broadcasting program as well as on executive bodies and personnel appointments. This dependency prompted renowned journalists to initiate the so-called broadcasting referendum. These efforts ultimately led to the 1966 reform, which was intended to strengthen the independence of the ORF. The internal organization was already outlined in outline according to today's model, but the ownership structure was formally retained.

It was not until the 1974 Broadcasting Act and the simultaneously passed Federal Constitutional Act of July 10, 1974 on safeguarding the independence of broadcasting that a final decisive step was taken in this regard: For the first time, "a separate economic entity" was established - somewhat unadorned - and its bodies were further differentiated and expressly made independent. The ownership rights to the former Österreichische Rundfunk Ges.m.b.H. - as the legal materials reveal - were transferred to this new institution by the federal and provincial governments; an independent "institution" was therefore established. Since then, the ORF has to a certain extent belonged to itself, or rather: the ORF is ownerless. The legislator took up this idea in 2001 and accentuated it further: The ORF Act 2001 ordered a "change of form" conversion of the institution into a "foundation". The political motivation for this was to emphasize the idea of ownerlessness and to use the general public as the beneficiaries, which a foundation must have. The purpose of the foundation is to fulfill the public-law mandate. The internal organization of the bodies was updated with a new name (in particular "Foundation Board" instead of "Board of Trustees"). Since then, the answer to the introductory question has been "Who owns the ORF?": All of us. And yet no one. It is clear that in the case of ownerless companies, whose executive bodies are legally independent and not subject to instructions, the question of how the members of the executive bodies are appointed is of particular importance. As the Constitutional Court stated on 05.10.2023 (G215/2022), the independence of the ORF's management bodies is intended to ensure that "neither state nor private forces can influence the activities of the management bodies by exerting influence on the activities of the ORF's program-creating employees for their own purposes. In view of the ORF's function as a "public watchdog" ... this is particularly important in relation to those political forces [note: such as the federal government] which, because they are represented in the democratic institutions, must participate in the appointment of members of the ORF's collegial management bodies."

Among other things, the Constitutional Court had criticized the insufficient plurality of the composition of the Board of Trustees. Its ruling provides further impetus for legislators to make the internal organization of public broadcasting even more independent and pluralistic.

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