“Axel Eggebrecht Prize 2010” goes to Richard Goll and Alfred Treiber

The 10.000 € “Axel Eggebrecht Prize 2010”, donated for the second time by the Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig, is directed to authors, who have devoted an oeuvre of weight in terms of content and acoustic creativity to the radio genre “Feature”.

This time, the award equally acknowledges the life work of the two Vienna authors Richard Goll and Alfred Treiber, who have uniquely rendered outstanding services to the introduction, implementation and the development of the “Feature”, which can be regarded as the “prime genre of the radio”, within the Austrian broadcasting.

The jury had to deal with an exceptionally wide range of competitors. The ARD, the ORF and the Association of German Writers proposed the complete works of eleven candidates. Due to the significant applications, the jury would have been able to award this life work prize to five candidates. But it unanimously decided to hand over the prize to Richard Goll and Alfred Treiber for their historical achievement in the field of broadcasting.

Since the beginning 1970s, both authors revolutionised the traditional Austrian “professor radio”. They took advantage of the new stereophonic possibilities and gave the everyday world of the ordinary people, the “people out there on the radio in there” a voice. Fresh, unpretentious, journalistically accurate, funny. Equipped with their stereo microphones and without having any taboos, they hunted through Vienna and created a form of broadcasting, which the audience and critics found even more exciting than any crime story: the “Feature”.

The work of Richard Goll and Alfred Treiber consists of more than 100 “Features”. Both won several national and international awards, founded the “Feature” office at the ORF and presently began to recruit and train potential comrade-in-arms anywhere in Austria. After 30 years of programme work, the “Features” now belong to the flagships of the cultural channel Österreich 1.

Thus, the “Axel Eggebrecht Prize 2010” goes to a duo of double performance. It goes to journalistic radio artists with an extraordinary oeuvre, but also to a couple of authors, who think strategic. They soon recognised, that the “Feature”, which sparkles with vitality, could only be permanently successful in broadcast stations, if it is anchored institutionally, personnel influentially and powerfully. Richard Goll, the head of the “Feature” editorial of the ORF for many years, and Alfred Treiber, today’s head of culture and broadcast department of Ö 1, exemplarily succeeded in doing so. Even in international comparison, this is still unprecedented.

The public award ceremony of the “Axel Eggebrecht Prize 2010” will take place at the Leipzig Media Campus on Thursday, January 28th. All employees of radio stations as well as the listeners are welcome.

For additional informations on the “Axel Eggebrecht Prize 2010” and the statements of the jury members, see www.axel-eggebrecht-preis.de.

Text by: Peter Leonhard Braun (chairman of the “Axel Eggebrecht Prize 2010″ jury)

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