About ATV2

ATV2

ATV2, stylised as ATV II, is an Austrian commercial television channel based in Vienna. It is the second channel of ATV, launched on 1 December 2011 by the Tele München Gruppe and owned since 2017 by ProSiebenSat.1 Media through its Austrian subsidiary ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4. It is a sister channel of ATV, Puls 4 and Puls 24. ATV2 was created as a general-interest complement to the main ATV channel, built around films, series, comedy and culture, with repeats and extensions of ATV formats and, in its first design, its own editions of ATV news. Its programme presence is shared with the ATV group at atv.at, and its dedicated site is listed as atv2.at.

ATV2 belongs to the wave of second channels that digital television made possible in Austria. When analogue scarcity ended, both the public broadcaster and the leading private broadcaster expanded within weeks of each other: ORF launched ORF III and expanded ORF Sport + on 26 October 2011, and ATV answered with ATV2 on 1 December 2011. The channel's history since then, from an uncertain launch through a change of ownership to a soft relaunch in 2018 and full HD terrestrial broadcasting in 2022, shows how a modest second service finds its role inside a growing channel family.

Announcement and an uncertain brief

ATV released details of ATV2 to the press on 12 September 2011. The plans included original programming, movies, television series and newscasts, a formula similar to the main channel, and ATV was also working on segmenting its advertising sales with the new channel and finalising rates to make them attractive to advertisers. Dubbed anime such as Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were scheduled for daytime, together with films from the back catalogue of Herbert Kloiber, the owner of Tele München Gruppe. The satellite frequency was activated on 3 October 2011 on the Astra 1KR satellite, nearly two months ahead of launch. Contemporary observers noticed how open the brief remained. The Viennese outlet Stadt Bekannt commented on 25 September 2011 that the announcement was vague and that the children's programming scheduled for mornings was the only firm indication of what the channel would air, and there was genuine uncertainty about its target demographic and programme line. That vagueness is part of the historical record, and this profile states it openly rather than presenting the launch as fully formed.

Launch on 1 December 2011

Broadcasting began on 1 December 2011, at 12.45pm according to contemporary listings coverage. ATV2 launched as an encrypted satellite service at 19.2 degrees East, free-to-view with an ORF smart card or a Sky Austria viewing card, and available throughout Austria via cable and satellite, while terrestrial broadcasts were initially absent and later limited to selected regions. The additional satellite capacity came through a new transponder contracted by the transmission company ORS with SES Astra, the same expansion that supported ORF Sport Plus. More programme detail had been unveiled in November: two editions of ATV aktuell, an update at 5.05pm and a longer bulletin at 6.25pm, with movies and series in primetime from Monday to Thursday, blockbuster films on Tuesdays, beginning with the German film Die Geschichte vom Brandner Kaspar, and American series on Mondays including Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis and E-Ring. A cultural strand was planned from the start, including weekly opera productions from 8 April 2012, Easter Sunday, with productions from Zurich Opera House and the New York Metropolitan Opera, and a spin-off of ATV's Highlights covering the Austrian cultural scene. The Vienna Review, summarising the launch at the time, described the channel more simply as a complement to ATV's main service with films and reruns of series.

Positioning beside the main channel

Reference summaries describe ATV2 as focusing on movies, culture, news and other additional programming previously not covered by ATV, and as specialising in entertainment programming that complements ATV's offer. In practice its early schedule combined four elements: a daytime children's and anime block, its own early-evening news from the ATV newsroom, primetime films and American series, and a cultural line unusual for a commercial second channel, anchored by the Sunday opera broadcasts. The batch research for this profile likewise characterises it as a general-interest channel built around films, series, comedy and repeats of ATV formats. Over time the balance shifted toward entertainment, films and series, which is the role it performs within the ProSiebenSat.1 family today, while ATV itself carries the flagship reality and reportage formats and Puls 24 carries rolling news.

Terrestrial expansion and high definition

Terrestrial broadcasts of ATV2 began on 15 November 2012, but were limited to Vienna, Innsbruck and Bregenz. The channel therefore spent its first years primarily as a cable and satellite service. On 11 October 2016 the channel converted to high definition for cable and satellite, at which point about 1.2 million households could receive the HD feed, while it continued in standard definition on terrestrial television, where its penetration was recorded at 86 percent of Austria. The HD conversion coincided with the launch of the ATV Smart streaming platform by the group. After the change of ownership, a further technical step followed: on 22 November 2022 ATV2 converted to high definition on terrestrial television, and at the end of 2023 its standard-definition feed closed, in line with the main ATV channel. It is now available free-to-air through the simpliTV terrestrial platform.

Change of ownership in 2017

ATV2 was launched by Tele München Gruppe, the company of Herbert Kloiber, which owned ATV from its Vienna local beginnings. Kloiber announced the sale of the ATV group in August 2016, describing ATV as his biggest mistake after years of double-digit million losses. Contracts for the takeover by ProSiebenSat.1 were signed on 6 February 2017, the sale was executed on 9 March 2017 at a price of 25 million euros for the group, and its conclusion was announced on 6 April 2017, subject to conditions including editorial independence and the maintenance of Austrian formats. The new owner stated that it wanted to continue ATV2. Following the acquisition, the ATV operation moved to the Marx Media Quarter at the end of 2017, and a new concept for ATV2 was developed by the end of that year.

The 2018 soft relaunch

At the beginning of 2018 a soft relaunch of ATV2 took place under its new owners. The restructuring removed reruns of ATV's original programmes from the channel and raised the possibility of channel-specific original content, with programmes on esports among the ideas reported at the time. From 2 May 2018, ATV was placed in charge of all of ProSiebenSat.1's Austrian channels, integrating ATV2's management into the wider family. The relaunch marks the point at which ATV2 stopped being simply an overflow for the main channel and was repositioned as a distinct entertainment service within a portfolio that also includes Puls 4 and, from 2019, the news channel Puls 24. Its sister channels are formally listed as ATV, Puls 4, Puls 24 and the Austrian windows of the group's German channels, including ProSieben Austria, Sat.1 Österreich and kabel eins Austria.

Distribution and reception today

ATV2 is a national channel. It is broadcast terrestrially through simpliTV, distributed by cable and carried on satellite in encrypted free-to-view form, receivable with ORF or Sky viewing cards in the same way as the main ATV channel. That encryption model reflects the Austrian market, in which even commercial national channels are tied to the domestic card system rather than broadcast openly across Europe. For viewers the channel appears in Austrian channel line-ups alongside its sisters, and its programmes are promoted through the ATV online presence and the group's streaming services.

Role in the Austrian market

ATV2 has never been a market leader, and no reliable standalone ratings for it are documented in the sources used for this profile. Its value is strategic. Second channels allow a broadcaster to segment advertising, to give films and series a second window, to test formats and to hold audience within the family rather than losing it to competitors. For Tele München, ATV2 extended a single-channel business at a moment when ORF was expanding its thematic family. For ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4, it completes a four-channel Austrian free-TV portfolio, Puls 4, ATV, ATV2 and Puls 24, that together reached a combined 27.4 percent share among viewers aged 12 to 49 in June 2022, according to industry analysis. ATV2's individual contribution to that total is not separately documented, and this profile does not estimate it.

Assessment and limits of the record

The verified record for ATV2 covers its announcement, launch, early schedule, opera and cultural plans, terrestrial expansion, HD milestones, ownership change and 2018 repositioning in reasonable detail, drawn from contemporary trade reporting and its reference entries. It is thinner on the channel's present-day schedule, its current original productions and its audience performance, and the launch-era reporting itself acknowledged that the channel's concept was initially vague. Readers should therefore treat ATV2 as a well-documented structural story, the second channel of Austria's first private broadcaster, rather than a channel with a famous individual programme identity. Where the sources stop, this profile stops: no current ratings, presenters or programme titles beyond those documented have been added.