Hitradio Ö3 is one of the national radio station

Radio station

Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...

s of Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

's state-run broadcaster ORF

ORF (broadcaster)

Österreichischer Rundfunk, ORF, is the Austrian national public service broadcaster.Funded from a combination of a television licence fees and revenue from limited on-air advertising, ORF is the dominant player in the Austrian broadcast media...

.

The station focuses on contemporary music

Contemporary hit radio

Contemporary hit radio is a radio format that is common in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia that focuses on playing current and recurrent popular music as determined by the Top 40 music charts...

. Until 1995 its schedules included many specialist music shows, but following a reorganization of ORF's channels shortly before the introduction in Austria of private commercial radio, these have now been moved to FM4

FM4

FM4 is an Austrian national radio station, operated by the ORF. Its main target is the youth audience, and much of the music output is characterised by an alternative rock and electronic music slant....

.

Ö3 was for a long time the only ORF station permitted to broadcast commercial

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

s, and it remains the station with the largest amount of advertising time per day. For this reason it is often called "ORF's cash cow

Cash cow

In business, a cash cow is a product or a business unit that generates unusually high profit margins: so high that it is responsible for a large amount of a company's operating profit...

". Ö3 has the biggest market share

Market share

Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...

 by far (averaging 32%) of all Austrian radio stations, more than all private radio stations together.

The station also broadcasts via satellite television

Satellite television

Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...

, with a display showing the previous, current and upcoming tracks, the time. and other information such as traffic reports.