Orf 1 Live

ORF 1 live (ORF eins) is an Austrian public television channel owned by ORF. It was the first television channel in Austria, started in 1955.

ORF 1 is one of four public TV channels in Austria. It is funded by a mixture of advertising revenue and television licence fees: as such, unlike the German TV stations (which are generally available free-to-air), ORF 1 and its sister channels are encrypted over satellite.

ORF 1 mainly shows films, TV series and sporting events; this is in contrast to ORF 2, which focuses more on news, documentaries and cultural programming. As the target audience of ORF 1 is younger than that of ORF 2, ORF's children's output, okidoki, is broadcast on ORF 1 every morning. Popular sporting events, such as skiing, Formula One and association football are also usually shown on ORF 1. ORF has exclusive rights to many sports; for example, it holds the rights to Formula One until 2020. In addition to the regular commentary, some sporting events, as well as some dramas, carry special commentary tracks for the visually impaired, via the Zweikanalton system.

Until 9 April 2007, ORF's flagship news programme Zeit im Bild (The Times in Pictures) was broadcast at 7:30pm on both ORF 1 and ORF 2; as part of a major programme overhaul, this was replaced on ORF 1 with the soap opera Mitten im 8en. Due to poor ratings, the soap was short-lived and was replaced on 2 July 2007 by Malcolm in the Middle. To fill the void left by removing Zeit im Bild from ORF 1, two new news programmes entitled ZiB 20 and ZiB 24 were introduced; as their names suggest, they are broadcast at 8pm (20:00) and midnight (24:00) every night. In addition, short bulletins known as ZiB Flash are shown several times throughout the day.

Feature films form a key part of the primetime output on ORF 1, and are shown several nights a week: many movie premieres are shown at the same time as on German broadcasters, but without the commercial interruptions that are commonplace on private German channels. Certain films and series are broadcast with both the German dub and the original (usually English) soundtrack via Zweikanalton (Two-channel sound).