About Okto

Okto

Okto is Austria's first non-commercial community television channel — a participatory, public-access station for Vienna that launched on 28 November 2005 and broadcasts around the clock. Operated by the non-profit Community TV-GmbH on behalf of the association Verein zur Gründung und zum Betrieb Offener Fernsehkanäle Wien (the Association for the Foundation and Operation of Open Television Channels in Vienna), Okto is not a channel that programmes for its audience: it is a channel whose programmes are made by its audience. Volunteers, community groups, associations and independent producers create their own shows in Okto's studios, with training, equipment and support from the station's professional team. Since the autumn of 2005 it has served, in its own description, as a media platform for a pluralistic society — bringing topics, languages and communities to the screen that mainstream television rarely shows.

Okto is one of only three non-commercial community television channels in Austria, alongside dorf TV in Linz and FS1 in Salzburg, and it is the model on which the sector was built: when it launched in 2005, participatory television of this kind had never existed in Austria. Its history is therefore also the history of how community media — long established in Austrian radio — finally reached the television screen.

Origins and launch

Okto's creation was a political as well as a media project. Academic research on Austrian community broadcasting records that in 2003 the Vienna city council, led by a coalition of political parties, approved annual funding of approximately one million euros for a new Vienna community television channel. Organisational development followed: an association was formed to found and operate open television channels in Vienna, a board led by Thomas Bauer took shape, and a management team headed by Christian Jungwirth — who had founded several community radio stations in Austria in the 1990s and remains Okto's managing director — built the station. The student television operation at the University of Vienna was incorporated into the technical development of its studios and transmission capacity. The result was the launch of Okto TV in 2005 — dated precisely to 28 November 2005 — on channel 8 of the Vienna cable system.

The launch filled a conspicuous gap. Austria had a lively community radio sector dating from the 1990s, but television had remained divided between the public ORF and, after liberalisation, commercial broadcasters. Okto's founders — media activists, academics and community organisations gathered in its backing association — set out to prove that the public-access model, familiar from North America and from parts of northern Europe, could work in Austrian television too. Austrian media histories record the launch as a first: with Okto, in November 2005, a participatory TV station went on air in Austria for the first time.

Ownership, governance and funding

Okto is backed by the Verein zur Gründung und zum Betrieb Offener Fernsehkanäle Wien, an interest association whose board, as listed by the station, includes figures from Austrian journalism, academia and law — among them the journalist Armin Thurnher and the media scholar Tassilo Pellegrini. Broadcasting is carried out by the non-profit Community TV-GmbH under managing director Christian Jungwirth. The station is financed mainly through the Non-Commercial Broadcasting Fund of the Austrian regulatory authority RTR (Rundfunk- und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH), alongside the City of Vienna's foundational support and grants and service income documented in research on the station. That funding model — public money, allocated at arm's length through a dedicated non-commercial fund, for a station owned by civil society rather than by the state or by advertisers — is the defining institutional feature of Austrian community media, and Okto is its largest television example.

How Okto works: participation as a format

Okto's programme is user-generated in the original sense. Production groups — more than 150 of them, comprising over 500 volunteer participants, in figures documented in academic research drawing on the station's own reporting — make programmes in Okto's studios, supported by a salaried team (described in industry coverage as around twenty staff) that trains volunteers, lends equipment from microphones to lights, and provides editing and voiceover facilities, with the explicit aim of making community producers self-sufficient. The station describes its output as diverse, frequently unusual and often unpredictable — a complementary programme containing much that cannot be found on public or commercial television. That unpredictability is not a flaw but the point: an open channel's schedule is a cross-section of the city's associational life, shifting with whoever walks through the studio door.

Programming

The formats documented from Okto's schedule illustrate its range. Latino TV is produced by Austria's Latin American community. "12 Minutes Live" offers studio performances by independent musicians. "Mulatschlag" is a rock music magazine. "Oktoshop" showcases independent filmmakers and their projects. Around such documented examples sits the wider flow of community programming: shows by migrant and minority communities in their own languages, programmes by cultural initiatives, political magazines, youth productions and experimental formats that no commercial scheduler would commission. Okto's own English-language information page emphasises that the station supports creative minds and communities in bringing to the screen topics and concerns that might not find a place on mainstream television — including, notably, the city's many linguistic communities, in a capital where a large share of residents have a migration background. Programmes that viewers miss are available afterwards in the Oktothek, the station's online media library.

Distribution and how to watch

Okto began on Vienna's cable system and now reaches viewers across Austria. The station's own guidance is that it can be watched throughout Austria with A1 TV and UPC (Magenta) cable; in Lower Austria and Burgenland it is also part of kabelplus's digital package; and in the greater Vienna area and parts of Lower Austria and Burgenland it is available via DVB-T2 through simpliTV. In addition, the programme is livestreamed worldwide on the station's website, and the Oktothek provides catch-up viewing anywhere. That distribution — national cable carriage, a terrestrial window in its home region and global streaming — gives a Vienna community channel a reach its founders in 2005, launching on a single city's cable network, could scarcely have expected.

International cooperation

Okto's participatory model has also made it an international partner. In June 2015, Community TV-GmbH signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement with China's Zhejiang Radio Television Group (ZRTG), one of China's largest broadcasting networks — a partnership documented by UNESCO's cultural policies platform. The agreement grew out of Okto's broadcast of the documentary series "Die Entdeckung von Zhejiang" (The Discovery of Zhejiang) and its format "China am Puls" (China on the Pulse); over 70 per cent of Chinese nationals living in Austria come from Zhejiang province, which gave the exchange a direct community logic for a Viennese station. The two organisations agreed to continue exchanging programmes, to assist each other with filming permits and location scouting, to share know-how about their media landscapes and to work toward co-productions. For a community channel, the episode shows the model's outward reach: Okto's community formats circulate beyond Europe, and international content flows back to the communities it serves in Vienna.

Okto and the Austrian community media sector

Okto stands at the head of a small, distinctive sector. Austrian community television consists of three channels with 24-hour full programmes: Okto in Vienna (2005), dorf TV in Linz (2010) and FS1 in Salzburg (2012) — each documented in sector histories as following a similar participatory concept. Together with the community radio stations, they are represented by the Verband Freier Rundfunk Österreich, the Association of Free Broadcasting in Austria, on whose board Okto's managing director Christian Jungwirth has served as chair. The sector is sustained by the RTR's Non-Commercial Broadcasting Fund and by municipal and regional support, and it is recognised in Austrian and European media policy as the third pillar of broadcasting, alongside public and commercial media. Okto's role in that architecture is foundational: it was the proof of concept that community television could be funded, licensed, staffed and watched in Austria, and its organisational template — association ownership, non-profit operating company, professional core team enabling volunteer production — is the template the later channels adapted to their own cities.

What the public record shows — and what it does not

Okto is unusually well documented for a channel of its size, thanks to academic research on Austrian community broadcasting, the station's own detailed public information and international policy records. The launch date, founding process, city funding decision of 2003, governance, funding sources, participation figures (over 500 volunteers in some 150 production groups, per research published in the late 2010s), named programme formats and distribution paths are all documented and are used here as documented. Precise current audience ratings are not published for Okto — Austrian audience measurement does not separately report a community channel's share in the sources consulted — and participation numbers naturally change over time, so the figures in this profile are attributed to their documented period rather than presented as current counts. The profile invents nothing beyond that record.

Why Okto matters

Okto matters because it changed what Austrian television could be. Before November 2005, an Austrian citizen could watch television or, with luck and money, make it for a broadcaster; there was no structured way for communities to make television as themselves. Okto created that way in the capital: open studios, training, equipment and airtime for the city's associations, minorities, artists and activists, funded as a public good and governed by civil society. Two decades on, its model has been replicated in Linz and Salzburg, studied by researchers and cited in European policy as a working example of media pluralism. In a television landscape dominated by a public broadcaster and German commercial imports, Okto remains the channel that belongs, in a literal sense, to its viewers — because they are the ones who make it.