Punch of the week

Say a quiet goodbye to soccer

Roland Weißmann, ORF Director General

(Bild: Tomschi Peter)

ORF Director General Roland Weißmann is obviously a real whiz when it comes to fresh, live soccer matches. However, the rest of the kitchen has to do it for the fee payers.

Yes, broadcasting rights for the European Football Championships are very expensive - it's like the top cuisine among TV content. It can happen that someone stops outside a restaurant and complains loudly about the prices on the menu. But then it gets funny when you see the same person in the back room greedily wolfing down the reasonably affordable dishes on the menu one after the other.

The rest'lküche is good enough for ORF viewers
This is ORF General Roland Weißmann's tactic when it comes to the European Football Championship. Private competitor ServusTV has simply dug deeper into its pockets and therefore has the TV rights this year, period. ORF is showing what ServusTV is leaving out, and plenty of money is flowing from the Küniglberg to ServusTV for this too. This doesn't stop Weißmann from turning his "Zeit im Bild" into a private wall of complaint, where he can rant about "Red Bull millions" and at the same time serve the fee payers the rest'lküche bought from ServusTV.

Weissmann himself doesn't have to make do with leftovers: He treats himself to better things and recently used his household tax to pay for a group trip to the Austria v France match, flight and hotel included, of course. So if you hear someone with their coat collar turned up and a Punch and Judy hat at the delivery entrance to the restaurant say: "Pack me the best of the best and put it on someone else's bill" - you know who it is.