The first Danish television experiments started in the late 1940s in the radio monopoly Statsradiodonien, later renamed Denmarks Radio and later again DR, and for a trial period from 1951 until 1954, there were three hours of transmission weekly. In 1954, television was inaugurated officially in Denmark. the man reason for this delay was a tight economic situation in the postwar period. The minister of finance in the liberal-conservative government was against spending money on television until the electronics industry had convinced him that domestic broadcasting would support the export of television sets. Thus Danish television was conceived as part of industrial and financial policy. In 1953, a new Social Democratic government removed the remaining opposition against television by referring to the “threat” of cultural influence from German television, and since then television policy has indisputably been considered a matter of cultural policy.

Television developed slowly in Denmark because of the economic situation and very high prices of television sets. In 1953, the number of licensed viewers was 800; in 1956, 16,000; and in 1959, 250,000. In the beginning, Statsradiofonien used every opportunity to broadcast popular programs as a tool to attract new viewers in order to increase the revenue derived from license fees on sets. The transmission time per week was extended from 10 hours in 1954 to 25 hours in 1961. From the mid-1960s, television was well established with about one million set owners, and gradually the programming policy was changed to one of more classical public service programming.

Throughout these developments, television has been seen as a powerful medium, and the political parties have wanted to control television as they had controlled radio. Therefore, the existing radio monopoly was extended for the provision of television. The main ideology was, and to a certain extent still is, that television should be used as a public service in the interest of the citizens in a democratic society. The Social Democratic Party, the labor movement, and strong popular movements have all seen radio and television as a great opportunity for enlightenment, as media that could pass on art and culture to all people in an egalitarian society. In the 1960s and 1970s, television was an integrated part of the development of the Danish welfare state model. Even though the idea of public service television has changed over time because of cultural, political, and management transformations, Danish television has been ruled by some basic public service principles.

Public service television has to be available nationwide to all at an equal, low price (the cost of the license fee and an antenna). Public service television is also obliged to provide a many-sided and manifold programming policy. An overall ambition has been to enlighten the audience culturally and to serve the public with sufficient information so that citizens can participate in the democratic process. Programming must be critical and put all authorities and institutions under scrutiny, and the programming must cater to various interests and needs of small as well as large population groups.

The public service station is obliged to broadcast a substantial amount of nationally produced programs, to participate actively in the creative arts, and to promote artistic and cultural innovation. These principles are important in a relatively small country like Denmark with 5.2 million inhabitants because national programs are much more expensive than imported fare.

Public service has to be independent of all vested interests as well as of specific political interests. Historically, this goal has led to problems. The main issue has been the conflict between the Parliament’s legitimate right to create certain general obligations in the public interest and the attempts of the government and the different parties to cultivate specific interests. The demand of independence from all vested interests resulted in the prohibition against any advertising in Danish television until 1988, when the second Danish terrestrial channel, the publicly owned TV 2, started out as a partly commercial and partly commercial and partly license fee-financed station.

Apart from the more classical public service programs, informative, educational, art, and high culture, Danish television from the very beginning broadcast entertainment such as quiz shows, variety shows, sports, and foreign popular drama. The two types of programming have been broadcast side by side, but in the public debate popular entertainment has generally been depreciated.

Programming in the monopoly era consisted mainly of single programs from among various genres. Only the news was scheduled at the same time every day. People checked the schedule and turned on the set whenever they found something of interest and as a natural choice turned off the set afterward. Concepts such as scheduling, program flow, and formats played no significant role. The concepts of the program was the decisive factor in terms of its content, form, and duration, and only in a small part of a program was secondary to the program idea, and even successful series were scheduled for only 6 or 12 shows —or as long as the producers enjoyed producing them.

Even though public service television in many ways succeeded in Denmark in the monopoly era and even though there has in general been political consensus for maintaining public service television in Denmark, the programming policy has been discussed fiercely within a political and cultural framework. The formal responsibility for the programming policy in Danmarks Radio was placed in a Radio Council, where the members were appointed by the political parties in accordance with their representation in the Parliament. This organizational construction resulted in a politicized television environment both externally and internally. Danmarks Radio had a privileged position and therefore was under constant monitoring, especially in terms of news coverage and journalistic programs. Politicians from both the right and the left complained over what they perceived as a biased programming policy, and there were continuous debates over whether a given single program should be impartial or whether it was the total output that should be balanced. This question was never solved, and after some fierce battles in the Radio Council in the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, it seemed that the producers gave up progressive ideas and began to practice forms of self-censorship in order to avoid further trouble.

Further, Danmarks Radio developed a paternalistic attitude toward the audience that caused a cultural conflict. Under shelter of the public service obligations to educate, enlighten, and give the public access to a unified culture, the station presented the middle- and high-brow stance of the cultural elite in Copenhagen, and the station showed contempt for the popular culture and the popular products from the entertainment industry. Another contributory cause of this form of paternalism was that the general public was not the primary audience for the TV stations. It was instead the politicians, who decided the size of the license fee, and the critics and public opinion makers, who gave the only public feedback. The general public was rarely heard, and there were no regular ratings. This attitude and a bureaucratic organization caused some difficulties for Danmark Radio in adjusting to the new competitive television situation in which the audience is addressed as consumers in a market instead of as citizens in a democratic society.

The transition from a monopoly to a multichannel system began in 1982, when satellite television was introduced in Europe. The “threat” from the sky caused the Danish politicians to strengthen the national terrestrial output as a protection against the influence from foreign TV stations.

When TV 2 was conceived in 1987, the right-wing politicians wanted a private alternative to the monopoly, which in their view was biased in favor of the Social Democratic Party. After a fierce political fight, the right-wing government succeeded in breaking the monopoly but had to compromise on the financial aspect, and TV 2 was launched in 1988 as a nonprofit public service station financed partly by commercials and partly by license fees. The rules for advertising on TV 2 were strict, and even though they have been modified several times, commercials still may appear only between programs.

TV 2 was immediately an innovative force in Danish television with a commercially inspired programming strategy and a more forthcoming attitude toward the audience. As a result, the channel has been a popular success. The most significant rating successes have been persistent scheduling of standardized commercial formats, national and local news, and a variety of Danish entertainment and factual programs. TV 2 had a Danish version of the game show Wheel of Fortune airing almost daily since its launch in 1988 until 2001. Furthermore, TV 2 has a great variety of programs and extensive regional programming, so the service has in broad outline fulfilled its public service obligations even though the station lacks sufficient national drama and other expensive program types.

The Danish television model with two competing public nonprofit public service stations has been successful in containing the influence from foreign television stations. The transnational satellite stations have established only a marginal position, even though the cable and satellite penetration increased from 58 percent in 1992 to 70 percent in 2003. In the early and mid-1990s, Danmarks Radio and TV 2 were able to establish a kind of duopoly situation with a combined audience share in 1992 of 75 percent. Danish television viewers wanted to watch national programs because of the languages and cultural heritage. Still, subtitled foreign programs (American and British) are a significant and popular part of the program supply on the national channels.

The main challenge to the public service stations has instead come from private satellite channels aimed at the Danish market and from a network of local stations. The most successful provider has been the Swedish-owned TV3 (Modern Times Group [MTG], a daughter company of Kinnevik). The channel was launched in 1987 from England under British jurisdiction and is therefore allowed to broadcast commercials within single programs. In the beginning, TV3 consisted mainly of American series, some high-profile sports events, and less than 10 percent Danish programs. MTG has over the years launched several channels, and in 2003 the service offers two channels, TV3 and TV31, providing mainly entertainment and sports programs, one all-sports channel (Viasat Sport), and two pay channels with movies. Gradually, TV3 and TV31 have increased the national output of cheaply produced but very popular entertainment shows based mostly on international formats. The biggest successes have been a Danish version of the game show Robinson, soccer’s Champion League, and Danish soccer. The other significant player is the American-owned Scandinavian Broadcasting System (SBS), which controls a terrestrial network of local stations, TVDanmark 2, with 80 percent national coverage. The local stations provide local programming for one to two hours daily, and the rest is networked entertainment. In 2000, SBS launched a satellite channel from England, TVDanmark 1, with entertainment and sports programs.

DR and TV 2 have responded to challenge from the commercial channels by launching supplementary satellite channels. DR 2 was launched in 1996 using a varied programming strategy with many programs targeting small population groups. A main goal was to relieve the main channel of some of the public service obligations so that the main channel could be more streamlined. Initially, DR2 was criticized for breaking one of the basic public service principles because the station was not available terrestrially. In 2000, TV 2 launched Zulu, targeting the commercially attractive age-group of 15 to 30 years with mainly entertainment programs.

In 2002, the two public service stations continuously were the most popular with a combined audience share of 70 percent —-DR 1 had 28%, DR2 4 percent TV 2 35 percent, and Zulu 3 percent. The MTG and SBS channels were taking the lion’s share of the remaining viewing time (11 and 7 percent, respectively). The plethora of transnational satellite channels and stations from neighboring countries have established only a marginal position with around 12 percent of the viewing time.

Throughout the revolutionary changes in the Danish television situation, the so-called Danish model, with two nonprofit public service stations, had been very successful in finding a significant new cultural role in the marketplace for modernized public service programming. To the satisfaction of the Danish viewing public, it has been possible to maintain a significant part of the Danish television system within the framework of cultural policy. The public service stations will face new political, technological, and economic challenges in the coming years. The current right-wing government has decided to privatize TV 2 in 2004 as part of a general liberalization of the media market. A privatized TV 2 will, to a large extent, still be prescribed to fulfill the existing public service obligations. The government wants the private TV 2 to continue the current programming policy, even though the financial conditions will be changed dramatically. In 2002, TV 2 had U.S. $87 million in license fees and $160 million in advertising revenues out of a total television advertising market of $262 million, so a new private owner of TV 2 will face tremendous financial challenges in an ever-increasing competitive television market on the brink of digitalization.