City Salzburg (Austria) First air date 1998 | Slogan Good Listening Format Community Radio | |
 | ||
Broadcast area Salzburg (state), Berchtesgadener Land, Traunstein Frequency 107,5 & 97,3 MHZ - 98,6 MHZ (Cable) | ||
Radiofabrik is Salzburg’s community radio. It is an independent, non-commercial, non-profit radio station in Salzburg, Austria.
Contents
History
Some of the founders of Radiofabrik (for example Wolfgang Hirner, who later became CEO of the Radiofabrik) started their illegal radio station as early as 1992, when the state-monopoly on broadcasting was still in force. The pirate radio was called «Radio Bongo 500».
The license was obtained in 1998, (five years after the state-monopoly was abolished,) and Radiofabrik became the second Community Radio in Austria to broadcast legally (Radio Helsinki started broadcasting from Graz as early as 1995). At the beginning Radiofabrik had a five-hours weekly slot on the commercial radio station «Radio Arabella».
Daily broadcasting started in January 2002, once again sharing the waves of a commercial station (City Radio). After the bankruptcy of «Objektwerbung GmbH» (owner of City Radio) in October 2003 Radiofabrik obtained the full broadcasting licence and has been on air 24/7 ever since.
In the early days the studio was located in a prefabricated container. In 2005 Radiofabrik headquarters were relocated inside the ARGE-Kultur Salzburg, a self-standing cultural centre, where professional infrastructure and equipment (office, studio, production and workshop rooms) were set up. The Radiofabrik community never stopped growing.
In 2014, 300 volunteers are producing a huge variety of radio shows in 14 different languages. From children to elder people, from homeless to professors, from classical music to heavy metal, from politics to trash you can hear almost anything on Radiofabrik – except commercials.
Programme and concept
As a non-commercial, independent Community Radio Radiofabrik is intended for everyone, individuals and groups, especially for those, who tend to be underrepresented in both private and public media. Therefore there are programmes produced by and for people senior 50, a special programme produced by youth for people under 18, and also programmes in more than 10 different languages. Radiofabrik is the broadcasting service with the largest diversity of opinion in Salzburg.
Everyone who wants to create his own radio programme can become a community member and has to pass a workshop, in which media law, technical skills and basic journalistic skills are taught. The person in charge of his own programme is free to choose topic and content of his or her broadcast. There is definitely no space for programmes with racist, sexist, pro-violent or anti-democratic content as well as religious propaganda.
The journalist Georg Wimmer, who has won several journalistic awards, was responsible for the coordination of the programme. In January 2009 project manager Eva Schmidhuber took on the programme administration.
Organization
Until 2009 the organization of Radiofabrik was based on two pillars: The „Verein Freier Rundfunk Salzburg“ is a registered association, in which all programme creators and supporters are members on institutional level. The association is responsible for the broadcasting service. The association owned a corporation in charge of the infrastructure (Sendeanlagen GesmbH), who also did hold the broadcasting licence. In 2009 the corporation was abandoned, infrastructure and license both went to the association.
The board of management consists of teacher and journalist Oliver Baumann (chairman of the association), scientists Su Karrer and Eva-Maria Kubin (both University of Salzburg), Radiofabrik founder Wolfgang Hirner and management-consultant Wolfgang Stöger.
Until 2007 Radiofabrik was managed by founder Wolfgang Hirner. Adult educator Andreas Wagner was CEO from 2007 forward. In March 2008 media artist and media manager Alf Altendorf became CEO of Radiofabrik.
Project work
Radiofabrik's local connection to NGOs and cultural sites in Salzburg is as vital for the programme of Radiofabrik as the orientation towards the European Union, which culminates in participating in many projects initiated by the EU.
The significance of activities in the field of media-related education has increased. One example was the Interreg-IIIA-Project “EuRegio Medienzentrum” (2006 - 2009), where the “Aktion Film Salzburg” and the District Office of Traunstein were involved.
Projects
Technic
Radiofabrik develops hardware and software for the editorial board of radio stations. In 2005 IT-engineer Hermann Huber presented the Radio Automation Software YARM (Yet Another Radio Manager) at the Ars Electronica. Many Austrian community radios did use YARM. In 2014 development was abandoned.
Broadcast area
The Radiofabrik broadcasts over FM 107,5 and 97,3 MHz (City of Salzburg, Flachgau, Tennengau, Berchtesgadener Land, Traunstein), via analogue and digital cable in the whole state of Salzburg and via Internet live stream.
External studios
In July 2015 Radiofabrik opened it´s first external studio in Bad Reichenhall (Germany).
Partnerships
Radiofabrik 107,5 is a member of the Alliance Community Radio Austria (Verband Freier Radios Österreich – VFRÖ) and of the umbrella organization of Salzburg's cultural sites (Dachverband Salzburger Kulturstätten). The association is founder and holds a 24% share of the community television FS1.
Awards
Radiofabrik received i.a. the following awards: