“ORF Zeit im Bild” starts on YouTube

The ORF is expanding its information offering and is launching “ORF Zeit im Bild” on YouTube today, September 2, 2024. After the great success of “Zeit im Bild” on TikTok with almost half a million followers and “Zeit im Bild” on Instagram with 1.1 million followers, this is “another opportunity to make information with the ‘ZIB’ seal of approval accessible to people “that the ORF no longer achieves otherwise,” says Irina Oberguggenberger, ORF editorial director for social media. 21 percent of users see news content on YouTube. As “ORF for everyone”, the ORF wants to be represented here with public service content that corresponds to the platform and the target group.

And so from now on, current articles from a wide range of ORF news programs will be online every day on YouTube under “ORF Zeit im Bild”. These include reports, reports and interviews from the “ZIB” editions on ORF 1 and ORF 2, but also “Aktuell nach eins” and “Aktuell nach Fünf”, “Bundesland aktuell”, “konkret” and “ORF III aktuell”, as well as highlights from “IM ZENTRUM”, “Press Hour” and “Round Table”. Thematically, the offering ranges from political news to business and science to chronicles and culture.

Every Thursday, “ZIB” hosts Kathrin Pollak and Stefan Lenglinger present “ZIB explains” videos that are around ten minutes long. The “ZIB” social media editorial team and the editorial team of the previous “ZIB 3” provide background information and classification as well as fact checks on the major current topics. With the “ORF Zeit im Bild” YouTube channel, the ORF is shifting additional resources from the previous linear to its digital offering in order to correspond to the new reality of media use.

Armin Wolf, as deputy editor-in-chief, coordinates the “ZIB” social media channels: “More than six million people in Austria use YouTube and many of them not only for entertainment, but also for information. But by no means everything that is offered there is serious information. That’s exactly what we want to deliver on YouTube, just as the ‘ZIB’ social media team already does for two and a half million subscribers on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.”

Irina Oberguggenberger, ORF editorial director for social media: “We know that young users primarily use YouTube as a search engine. This is where we want to come into play and provide answers to the most important information questions. We can use the research power of the largest newsroom in the country to go into depth, shed light on the background and classify the various aspects of the topic.”