About FS1

FS1

FS1 — FS1 Community TV Salzburg — is the non-commercial community television channel for the city and state of Salzburg, Austria. Launched on 16 February 2012, it broadcasts a 24-hour full programme made substantially by its own community: organisations, associations and individual volunteers who produce "user-generated TV" with the station's training and support. FS1 is owned by Community TV Salzburg Ltd., a non-profit company whose shareholders are the community media institutions of Salzburg themselves — a structure unique among Austrian broadcasters. Together with Okto in Vienna and dorf TV in Linz, FS1 is one of only three non-commercial broadcasters with a 24-hour full programme in Austria, and it is Salzburg's contribution to the country's small but distinctive community media sector.

The channel's name should not be confused with the ORF's historic channel designation FS1, which the public broadcaster used until 1992, or with international sports brands. Salzburg's FS1 stands for its own identity: "Freies Fernsehen Salzburg" in spirit — free, community-owned television for the Salzburg region, rooted in the city's community radio station Radiofabrik, from whose milieu the channel was initiated.

Founding and launch

FS1 was founded by Alf Altendorf and Markus Weisheitinger, figures from Salzburg's community radio scene around Radiofabrik, the city's free radio station. Research on Austrian community broadcasting describes the path: a legal organisation, Community TV Salzburg, was formed, and in 2011 the group secured a commitment for transmission of the new channel via a local digital television service and the Salzburg cable system of Salzburg AG. After delays caused by legal and financial questions, the project was reorganised as a shareholding entity in which local individuals, groups and institutions co-own the not-for-profit enterprise — a model more familiar from community enterprises than from broadcasting. The reorganised station was renamed FS1, moved into newly reconstructed studios and offices in Salzburg's arts quarter, and launched its broadcasting service on 16 February 2012.

The timing made FS1 the third and final member of Austria's community television trio, following Okto (Vienna, 2005) and dorf TV (Linz, 2010). Its launch completed a pattern: each of Austria's three community channels arose independently in its own city, from its own local movement, but all three developed within the same framework of RTR regulation and funding and local public support.

Ownership: a channel owned by its community

FS1's ownership is its most distinctive feature. The channel's owner, Community TV Salzburg Ltd., is held by the makers and institutions of Salzburg community media: the Association of Program Makers holds 24 per cent, Radiofabrik 24 per cent, the IMB (Institute for Media Education) 24 per cent, the Dachverband (the umbrella association of Salzburg cultural sites) 24 per cent, and individual shareholders the remaining 4 per cent. In other words, no commercial investor and no single institution controls the station; it is co-owned by the ecosystem that produces its programmes. Research on the sector notes that such shareholder schemes are uncommon in community media internationally, and that in Salzburg's case the model proved effective both at generating local private revenue and at anchoring the station in its community. Key people recorded for the station are Alf Altendorf as chief financial officer and Sophie Huber-Lachner as chief executive. The European Youth Portal's organisational record adds the human scale: some 30 organisations and 80 individuals are members of the organisation and make the television programme, working with independent producers to create the channel's user-generated output; sector research similarly describes a small salaried management team supporting more than fifty registered members and around 150 active volunteer producers in the station's earlier years.

Programming: user-generated television

FS1 runs a 24-hour programme service featuring the civil society of Salzburg. Its content is produced by its member organisations and individual producers — cultural initiatives, social organisations, youth groups, minority and migrant communities, and independent makers — rather than by a conventional programme department. The station's stated ethical goals, recorded in its European Youth Portal profile, are to support minorities, migrants, people with impairments, young people and cultural and subcultural movements, and its production, practice and content are intended to enhance understanding among communities, including the most marginalised, and to support peace, tolerance, democracy and development. It partners with similar organisations in media literacy, media training and education. The channel broadcasts in German and English, in 720p high definition. As at its sister stations, the schedule's character is therefore deliberately open: a mirror of Salzburg's associational life rather than a formatted commercial flow.

Training: the FS1 Academy

A defining part of FS1's work is education. The station runs an intensive training and workshop programme, the FS1 Academy, to qualify producers from all social, economic and cultural backgrounds to make television. Sector research notes that FS1 prioritises the recruitment and training of young video producers, many of whom contribute a robust selection of youth-based programmes to the channel. This educational mission aligns the station with its shareholder the Institute for Media Education and with the wider Austrian community media principle that access to the means of production — cameras, studios, editing skills and airtime — is itself a democratic good. The Academy turns viewers into producers, and it is the pipeline through which FS1's volunteer base renews itself.

Distribution and how to watch

Since its launch, FS1 has broadcast via DVB-C cable in many areas of the state of Salzburg, principally on the Salzburg AG cable network, and it is available nationwide across Austria via IPTV. Its programmes are also accessible online, with the Austrian free broadcasting association linking FS1's on-demand presence alongside the archives of Okto and dorf TV. The channel's broadcast area is thus twofold: its home state, where cable carriage puts it in Salzburg households, and the whole country, where IPTV and streaming carry it to anyone interested in Salzburg's community production. Picture format is 720p, and programming languages are German and English — the latter reflecting the international, academic and touristic character of the city it serves.

Funding

FS1's finances combine its unusual private base with Austria's standard community media support. The shareholder scheme generates local private revenue from its many small co-owners. Alongside it stands public funding: research records that the station secured an annual funding grant of 193,000 euros from the RTR's Non-Commercial Broadcasting Fund in 2012, the year of its launch, and sector accounts describe ongoing support from the RTR fund, the City of Salzburg and the Salzburg regional government. The combination — community shareholding, regulator fund grants and municipal and state support — sustains the station without advertising dependence and without licence-fee funding, the financial expression of its position as Austria's third broadcasting pillar in Salzburg.

FS1 and Radiofabrik: a community media house in two media

FS1 cannot be understood apart from Radiofabrik, Salzburg's community radio station, which is simultaneously its affiliate, its 24-per-cent shareholder and the milieu from which its founders came. Radiofabrik had broadcast independent, non-commercial, multilingual community radio in Salzburg since the late 1990s. When community television became feasible, the natural move was to extend the same principles — open access, non-commercial operation, community ownership, training — from sound to pictures. The result is that Salzburg possesses something few cities have: a matched pair of community radio and television stations, institutionally intertwined, sharing people, values and in part premises in the city's arts quarter. FS1's programmes and Radiofabrik's programmes draw on the same civil society, and producers can work across both media.

FS1 in the Austrian community sector

Nationally, FS1 completes the trio of Austrian community television. The three channels — Okto, dorf TV and FS1 — are united in the Alliance of Community Television Austria, established in 2010, whose members subscribe to a common charter of community television principles, and they participate in the Verband Freier Rundfunk Österreich, the association of free broadcasting, on whose board FS1's co-founder Alf Altendorf has served as treasurer. Sector research treats the three as a single phenomenon with local variations: sequential launches between 2005 and 2012, independent local origins, a shared framework of RTR governance and funding, and a shared mission of participation. FS1's local variation — the shareholder model and the Radiofabrik parentage — is the most institutionally innovative of the three, and it has attracted international scholarly attention as a funding and governance experiment in community media.

What the public record shows — and what it does not

FS1's public record is comparatively detailed: its launch date of 16 February 2012, founders, ownership percentages, key executives, distribution via Salzburg cable and nationwide IPTV, its 2011 transmission commitment, the 2012 RTR grant of 193,000 euros, its membership numbers as recorded by the European Youth Portal (30 organisations and 80 individuals), and its Academy training programme are all documented in reference, academic and institutional sources. Audience ratings are not published for FS1 in the sources consulted — community channels are not separately measured in Austrian ratings reporting — and membership and volunteer counts naturally vary over time, so figures here are those of their documented sources and periods. This profile states those limits openly and invents no numbers beyond the record.

Why FS1 matters

FS1 matters for three reasons. It completed Austria's community television map, giving the country's third major city-region a participatory channel to stand beside Vienna's and Linz's. It pioneered, with its shareholder structure, a way for a community to literally own its television station — programme makers, the community radio station, the media education institute and the cultural umbrella association holding the company together — a model studied well beyond Austria. And in its daily operation — volunteers trained at the FS1 Academy, organisations and neighbours making a 24-hour programme about their own city and state — it demonstrates the founding claim of community media: that television is too important to be left only to those who broadcast for a living, and that a city's civil society, given the tools, can fill a channel with itself.