Radiofabrik is Salzburg’s community radio. It is an independent, non-commercial, non-profit radio station in Salzburg, Austria.
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 broadcast 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.
In February 2009, radiofabrik started campaigning for (license-) fee splitting in the state of salzburg.
In 2011, KommAustria prolonged the stations broadcasting license for another 10 years (until 2021).
In 2012, the Community TV FS1 was founded.
In July 2015, the first external studio in Bad Reichenhall opened.
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.
Programmes are shared via the internet-platform of Austrias free radios.
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.
Professional editorial staff
Since its creation, the broadcaster has run semi-professional newsrooms. For the show "Magazin um 5", an employed chief editor engaged an additional team of editorial interns. This show was broadcast several times a week and was discontinued in 2015 for financial reasons. With the support of the city of Salzburg, a course of journalistic basics for radio editors was launched in autumn 2018. The so-called "Lehrredaktion" annually trains a group of volunteers in journalism. Upon the successful completion of the course, they can participate in production of the regional news for the local newsroom unerhört! - der Infonahversorger.
Another professional editorial team is responsible for music selection and self-produced music programs for the broadcaster.
Education
The radio has developed extensive media education training courses and workshops. According to their own statements, they offer the largest range of courses and workshops among all non-commercial broadcasters in Austria. The subjects vary from moderation training, audio editing and promotion to journalism courses. More than 1,400 people completed the courses in 2019 at Radiofabrik.