1998: Canned Fresh Air
Tin cans by “Radio Agora” with the label “Campaign: Fresh Air for Carinthia/ Akcija: Svez veter v korski eter”, 1997–1998/Haus der Geschichte Österreich, donated by Helmut Peissl
The fresh air that circulated in Carinthia in 1998 really did come from a tin can, namely from the radio. Following nearly a decade of legal disputes, activists had finally won the right to set up legal radio stations outside of state-owned broadcasting. The driving force behind the campaign had been initiatives in Carinthia who wanted to broadcast in Slovenian.
Bilingual radio programs were first heard in Carinthia/Koroška in 1989. At that time, activists took the only legal means of setting up a radio station open to them, namely broadcasting from an Italian mountain close to the border. That same year, they founded the association “Agora” (“Avtonomno gibajnje odprtega radia” or “Working Group for Public Radio”) with the aim of establishing the right to set up free radio stations. To do this, they took their case to the European Court of Human Rights. Working with other radio initiatives, especially those from Upper Austria with similar aims, they finally achieved their goal in 1993. Five years later, after parliament had regulated the awarding of licences, it became possible to broadcast in Carinthia. But only one frequency was allocated for free radio in the province. Radio Agora therefore agreed to share the frequency with the station Radio Korotan, despite huge ideological differences.
Actual broadcasting began on 26 October 1998 and marked the beginning of an important chapter in the history of Austrian radio. Since this date, Radio Agora has broadcast multilingual programmes daily. Most of the programmes are in Slovenian, but there are also segments in German, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Russian, Spanish, English and Arabic. Some programmes are made by Radio Agora staff, others by freelancers. The founding of this new station marked the evolution of Austria’s media landscape and increased its diversity as people were invited to create their own radio. Listeners became programme makers—long before the invention of the podcast.
Our thanks for information to Helmut Peissl and for text contributions to Johannes Pötzlberger.
