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Since 1988 the joint subsidiary “Mediaprint AG” has been in charge of the printing, distribution and advertisement canvassing of the two dailies. This led to the emergence of an integrated group of more than one dozen companies, which employs a total staff of about 4,000. In addition to free papers and investments in the audio-visual sector (e.g. “KRONEHIT”), it owns and participates in a number of magazines (e.g. “Profil”, “Trend”, “Rennbahn Express”), which are held through a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kurier. Thus “Mediaprint AG” is the country’s biggest media conglomerate.
Although the segment of “quality papers” as a significantly smaller reach compared to the three big papers, the reach of Der Standard and Die Presse is quite remarkable by an international comparison of quality dailies. Both daily newspapers reach more than 5% of the readers per day.
The liberal, independent daily Der Standard found by Oscar Bronner has been published since October 1988. In the beginning, the German Springer Group held a 50% investment, but in 1955 Oscar Bronner bought the shares back
Since 1998 the Süddeutsche Verlag holds 49% of the shares.
The middle-class, liberal and independent daily Die Presse was founded by Ernst Molden after World War II and has been published daily since October 19th, 1948. 51% of Die Presse is owned by Styria Verlag, while 49% are held by a private association.
In addition, the most important dailies of Austria’s federal provinces such as Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, Tiroler Tageszeitung, Salzburger Nachrichten as well as Vorarlberger Nachrichten boast excellent regional market positions.
The state-owned Wiener Zeitung was founded in 1703, making it the word’s oldest daily. It reaches about 0.9 % of the population aged over 14 years.
Notwithstanding the high level of concentration on the dailies market, three new daily newspapers have managed to establish themselves since the late 1980s: the above mentioned Der Standard (1988), Wirtschaftsblatt (1955), financed by investments of the Swedish Bonnier group, and the mass paper Täglich Alles founded in 1992 by Kurt Falk, formerly co-publisher of Neue Kronenzeitung. In the beginning, the cheap four-color paper managed to garner market shares from Neue Kronenzeitung but due to a lack of advertising revenue Kurt Falk discontinued the print version in August 2000 (after that Täglich Alles continued to appear online for some time).
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