Austria: Press subsidies in search of a new design

Abstract

Media in Austria have to cope with two basic and obviously unchangeable conditions: (a) the limited size and shortage of resources of the national and regional domestic markets and (b) Germany as large neighbouring country with a highly developed range of media products belonging to the same language area. Austria itself is a small market with about eight million inhabitants and it is divided into even smaller regional markets (with only one exception-the Viennese region with two million inhabitants). And it is part of the German language area, which means that a great number of widely read special interest magazines and some weekly magazines are produced and published in Germany. The same goes for the television sector.