Cards The Problem As Broadcaster Shuffles Deck

Michael Hedges June 11, 2012 Follow on Twitter

As audience shares drop, public broadcasters continue to look for solutions. With flat or contracting revenue streams and politicians wary of details, new ideas look like old ideas. The digital dividend strikes again.

Danish public broadcaster DR will close three television channels, continuing to reorganize output, it was announced last week (June 8). Earlier in the week General Director Maria Rørbye Rønn said DR2 would become a 24/7 news and current affairs channel. The changes will take place at the beginning of 2013.

Channels Update, DR HD and DR Mama are facing the axe with most programming shuffled to other channels. DR HD will become a children’s channel focusing on “provocative and entertaining television,” reports Politiken (June 8). A separate and distinct channel broadcasting in HD is no longer necessary, said a DR press statement, because “it has played its role as the engine of HD development in a era when both DR and others are increasingly transferring broadcasts to HD.”

“We want to have one main channel supplemented with a number of targeted channels that can satisfy the Danish needs,” said Ms Rørbye Rønn to Politiken (June 4). DR2 will be a “community channel with a broader perspective” but “not a breaking news channel.” The new DR3 will focus on the “younger generation, 15 to 39.” Children’s channel DR Ramasjang will broaden its focus to 3 to 12 year olds. Culture channel DR K is not affected.

Audience shares for DR channels and channel TV2 plummeted in the first four months of 2012, according to TNS Gallup (May 14). The audience drop was “unheard of,” said OMD broadcasting analyst Claes Braagaard, quoted by journalisten.dk (May 15). With digital switch Danes have tuned into cable, which offers TV channels they may not have tried before. Year to year the Discovery Channel and MTV showed double-digit audience growth, as did ProSiebenSat/SBS-owned Channel 5.

TV2 is largely publicly funded, separate from DR and offers its main channel plus five branded channels. The main channel has a large news and information commitment but also foreign series and sitcoms. From January 2012 viewing main channel TV2 requires a decoder card. Denmark no longer has free-to-air commercial television. As a percentage of total ad spending, TV advertising in Denmark is about 20%, far below the European average, eclipsed by print and internet advertising.

Other media watchers in Denmark see a slightly different issue in the audience declines. “That DR and TV2 are losing audience shares is overall a public service problem,” said Copenhagen University media researcher Stig Hjarvad to Berlingske (May 14). “There is no doubt about that. Public service (broadcasting) is there to serve the entire population. It’s obviously not good.” 

Since becoming DR General Director in February 2011 Ms Rørbye Rønn has overseen a restructuring of the public broadcaster, including the dismissal of several key executives in both television and radio. “It is clear that with such changes I can not exclude that there will be changes in the organization,” she said. “But we have the budget that we have always had. We have just shuffled the cards in a new way.”

“I can understand why DR makes these changes,” said DR employee representative Anne Serlev to journalisten.dk (June 6). “It’s always uncomfortable for employees when there are such large changes. But we have to do something to get younger viewers otherwise there’s no work for us in the future.”

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