Designated ORF chief promises more regional content

ORF’s designated director-general Clemens Pig has promised to expand regional programming while keeping cuts away from the broadcaster’s output. Pig, who will take office at the start of next year, made the comments in an interview with ORF Burgenland during a visit to the broadcaster’s regional studio in Eisenstadt on Friday.

“A lot is really at stake now, not only for ORF and private media, but above all for us as people who form the public sphere,” Pig told Burgenland heute presenter Elisabeth Pauer-Gerbavsits. He said the question was whether strong media would continue to connect society, investigate major issues and prepare facts for the public.

Pig stressed the importance of ORF’s regional studios, saying they connected Austria “at the source”. His vision was to bring more content from the regions to people across Austria. He said this kind of local service could only be provided directly from the regions, adding that such content could not be found on major platforms or in artificial intelligence applications.

Despite financial pressure, Pig said programming should not be cut. “Every euro that ORF receives through the household levy, which I prefer to call the democracy levy, must go into programming,” he said. Savings should instead be made in areas that audiences would not notice. Organisationally, he said he wanted to make ORF “leaner”.

Pig also highlighted the Burgenland studio’s role as a centre for minority groups. He said it was very important to produce content for those communities across different cultural and language environments.

Reaching younger people in the era of social media was another major challenge, Pig said. The Burgenland studio had already entered this new environment with its own social media team, but he added that ORF also needed to modernise its programming with “cooler” content and topics that mattered to younger audiences.