About ORF 1

ORF 1

ORF 1 is an Austrian public television channel owned by Österreichischer Rundfunk, the national public broadcaster known as ORF, and headquartered in Vienna. It was the first television channel in Austria, launched on 1 August 1955, and it remains one of ORF's four national television channels alongside ORF 2, ORF III and ORF Sport +. Within the ORF family, ORF 1 is the entertainment-led generalist channel: it mainly shows films, television series and sporting events, together with ORF's children's programming, and it addresses a younger and more urban audience than ORF 2, which concentrates on news, documentaries and culture. Its programme listings are published through ORF's television guide service for ORF 1.

Because it was Austria's only television channel for its first six years, ORF 1's early history is effectively the early history of Austrian television itself. The channel that began in 1955 under the simple name ORF Fernsehen now competes in a crowded German-language market against Austrian private channels and the full range of German broadcasters available by cable and satellite, yet it retains a distinctive public service character, including advertising-free children's programming and film premieres shown without the commercial interruptions common on private German channels.

The first channel in Austria

ORF 1 started on 1 August 1955. Regular programming began in 1957, when the service operated six days a week, and it began broadcasting every day in 1961, the same year its future sister channel began as a technical test programme. Austria's flagship news programme, Zeit im Bild, also dates from this founding period: its first edition was broadcast on 5 December 1955, modelled at the time on BBC practice, with an in-vision presenter reading the day's news. For decades the channel was not called ORF 1 at all. From 1955 to 1967 it was known as ORF Fernsehen, and from 1967 to 1992 as FS 1, the numbering reflecting its position as the first Fernsehprogramm, or television programme, of the Austrian broadcaster.

The present name arrived in stages. FS 1 became ORF 1 in 1992, and on 8 January 2011 the channel was rebranded as ORF eins, the written-out German form of the name, as part of a wider ORF refresh. On 26 April 2019 it was renamed back to ORF 1, with a brand new logo and on-screen design by the design agency Bleed. That return to the numeral form is the identity the channel still uses.

A younger, entertainment-led remit

The division of labour between ORF's two main channels is explicit and long-standing. ORF 1 mainly shows films, TV series and sporting events, in contrast to ORF 2's focus on news, documentaries and cultural programming. Because ORF 1's target audience is younger than that of ORF 2, ORF's children's output, the strand known as okidoki, is broadcast on ORF 1 every morning. ORF describes that children's repertoire as free of advertisement and violence, a public service commitment that distinguishes the channel from commercial rivals. Since 1 January 2024 ORF has also operated ORF KIDS as a dedicated children's streaming service, and ORF KIDS programming has since been carried linearly on ORF 1 as well, reinforcing the channel's role as the home of children's television within the ORF family.

Feature films form a key part of primetime output and are shown several nights a week. Many movie premieres are shown at the same time as on German broadcasters, but without commercial interruptions. Certain films and series are broadcast with both the German dub and the original, usually English, soundtrack available through Zweikanalton, the two-channel sound system. ORF also abridges some movies in line with child-protection rules, though less often than German stations, and identifies programmes with guidance initials, including X for content not suited to children and O for adults only.

Sport as a pillar of the schedule

Popular sporting events such as skiing, Formula One and association football are usually shown on ORF 1, making live sport one of the channel's defining strengths. ORF held the exclusive rights to Formula One until 2020; since then race weekends have been split equally between ORF 1 and the private channel Servus TV. Skiing, a sport of national significance in Austria, has repeatedly provided the channel's landmark broadcasts, including the event chosen to launch its high-definition service. In addition to regular commentary, some sporting events and some dramas carry special commentary tracks for visually impaired viewers, delivered through the MPEG-4 system that succeeded Zweikanalton for this purpose. Sport therefore serves both a mass audience and an accessibility function on the channel.

A notable recent example of ORF 1's event role came on 10 August 2024, when the channel broadcast free-to-air the Disney+ edit of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour at 9.45pm, following the cancellation of the Austrian leg of the tour after the revelation of a terrorist plot. The decision showed the channel being used as a national platform at short notice for an audience that had lost a live event, a function only a widely available public channel could perform in that way.

News on ORF 1 after 2007

Until 9 April 2007, ORF's flagship news programme Zeit im Bild was broadcast at 7.30pm on both ORF 1 and ORF 2 simultaneously. A major programme overhaul then ended the simulcast and concentrated the flagship bulletin on ORF 2. On ORF 1 it was replaced first by the soap opera Mitten im 8en, which performed poorly and was replaced on 2 July 2007 by the imported comedy Malcolm in the Middle. To fill the information gap, two new news programmes were introduced on ORF 1: ZiB 20, broadcast at 8.00pm, and ZiB 24, broadcast at midnight, each summarising the day's events in a compact format designed for the channel's younger audience. Short bulletins known as ZiB Flash are shown several times throughout the day. This settlement still defines the channel: headline news in short form on ORF 1, and the full news service on ORF 2.

Branding and visual identity

ORF 1's logos trace Austrian design history. From 1968 until 1992 the channel prominently featured the red ORF eye logo in its idents alongside stylised number 1 logos. In 1992 the first version of the green cube logo was introduced, designed by Neville Brody. In 2000 the logo was updated into a moving, soft-edged, gelatinous cube with the number 1 inside, a version nicknamed Jelli. In 2005, to avoid the logo being burnt into plasma screens, it was changed from green to an all-over grey. The 2011 rebrand to ORF eins brought a further identity, which lasted until the return to ORF 1 in April 2019 with the Bleed design. Few European channels preserve such a well-documented sequence of identities, and the changes mirror the channel's repeated repositioning for successive generations of viewers.

High definition and technical development

ORF started its high-definition services on ORF 1. The first HD broadcast was a ski race, The Nightrace in Schladming, on 28 January 2008, followed by a special HDTV event in all regional ORF stations. The technological partner for HD productions was Telekom Austria. Test operations began on 1 May 2008, when households with an ORF card could see a trailer of sports footage, films and documentaries, and ORF 1 HD officially launched on 2 June 2008, five days before the start of the UEFA European Football Championship of 2008, a tournament Austria co-hosted. Initially the vast majority of programmes were upscaled, apart from some sporting events, movie premieres and American series, but native HD production gradually increased, and older material was re-sourced in HD, including remastered older episodes of The Simpsons broadcast from 2017. In January 2025 ORF ended standard-definition satellite distribution of ORF 1, along with ORF 2 and ORF III, so the channel is now carried by satellite in HD only.

Ownership, funding and distribution

ORF 1 is owned by ORF, Austria's national public broadcaster, organised as a non-profit foundation under public law with headquarters at the ORF-Zentrum Küniglberg in Vienna and regional studios in all nine federal provinces. ORF is Austria's largest media organisation and a member of the European Broadcasting Union. The channel is funded by a mixture of advertising revenue and television licence fees. As a result, unlike German public stations, which are generally available free-to-air, ORF 1 and its sister channels are encrypted over satellite, with reception tied to the Austrian ORF card system.

ORF 1 is available terrestrially in Austria on DVB-T and through the DVB-T2 platform simpliTV, by cable and IPTV, and in South Tyrol in Italy, where it is carried on the Rundfunk Anstalt Südtirol network. Programmes are streamed live and on demand through ORF ON, the platform that replaced ORF TVthek in May 2024, although availability outside Austria is limited for rights reasons. Its broadcast area is officially listed as Austria, South Tyrol and Switzerland.

Position within the ORF family and the market

ORF 1 does not operate alone. Its sister channels divide the public service offer between them: ORF 2 for news, regional programming, documentary and debate; ORF III for culture and information; and ORF Sport + for dedicated sport beyond the major events ORF 1 retains. ORF is also a partner in the cross-border cultural channel 3sat. In market terms, ORF 1 competes not only with ORF 2 and Austrian private channels such as ATV, Puls 4 and Servus TV, but also with the Austrian windows of German channels and the German originals themselves, which take a large share of Austrian viewing. Its response has been a clear identity: Austrian and international films and series, marquee sport, children's programming in the mornings and short-form news, all under a public service framework laid down in the ORF Act.

Why ORF 1 matters

ORF 1 matters because it is where Austrian television began and where the country still gathers for its biggest shared entertainment and sporting moments. Its history from a six-day-a-week service in 1957 to an HD channel launching a European football championship in 2008 parallels the technical and social development of the medium in Austria. Its careful separation from ORF 2, entertainment and youth on one channel and information and tradition on the other, is a model of portfolio management that has kept both channels distinctive for decades. This profile relies on well-documented facts about the channel's launch, names, programming pillars, news changes, branding and HD history; detailed verified information about individual current entertainment formats is thinner in English-language sources, and no figures beyond those documented have been added.