Norwegian Broadcasting Corp
www.nrk.no

TV Norge AS
www.tvnorge.no
resepjonen@tvnorge.no

Canal Digital Norge
www.canaldigital.no
kunderservice@canaldigital.no

Canal+ Norway
www.canalplus.no

TV2 Norway
www.tv2.no

TV3 Norway
www.tv3.no
hans.pieter.hognestad@tv3.no

TV Finnmark
www.finnmark.no

TV Vestfold AS
www.tvvestfold.no
redaksjln@tvvestfold.no

Viasat AS
www.viasat.no

Norway (population 4,445,000)                              

State monopoly NRK controlled all radio and TV from 1933 to 1981. Survival was hard for new stations, since advertising was outlawed. Even today local TV has yet to take off, despite the lift of the advertising ban in 1992. Since the late 90s, however, 27 local operators representing the same number of regions have been broadcasting terrestrially through windows on satellite channel TV Norge.

Roughly 40% of Norwegians have cable, and can access 100 channels through either Telenor Avidi or UPC. International channels have proven successful only amongst schoolchildren, but TV-3 (respective local language transmissions in Norway, Sweden and Denmark) has an 8% market share.

eSCape tv will target Norway like any other developed western economy; our only gripe at the onset is that Scandinavian Television (an American company) holds a majority stake in TV Norge, which in turn provides a platform for the 27 local operators. Our product is largely Euro-global in nature (although individual programme segments are invariably regional), and the equally inevitable Americanisation of packages overseen by controllers in the States is unfavourable to our ‘full series’ products. However, one thing leads easily to another, and if we can have, say a subtitled version of the music video ‘Insomne en Oslo’ (Spanish lyrics) screened, followed by perhaps our feature on Oslo’s tramways and then our general footage of the city, eSCape tv ’s full programming may suddenly be in demand. Significantly, TV-2 owns the remaining 49% share in TV Norge.

For the past ten years or so, TV-2 has commandeered around 30% of viewing, TV Norge and TV-3 each now attract roughly 10% of the market, while public broadcaster NRK’s share is down to 40%. Nevertheless NRK-2 was born in 1996 (3% share), and TV-2 and NRK are working together on digital TV proposals for Norway. We should also keep an eye on Telenor in the coming years, which has purchased the physical apparatus of terrestrial transmission from NRK. Nobody believes that this was done simply with a view to expanding or cross-subsidising their telecommunications network…

Public

NRK-1                        38% (98% penetration)

NRK-2                        3%   (78% penetration)

Private

TV-2                            32% (95% penetration)

TV Norge                   10% (83% penetration)

TV3        (ents.)                      8%   (58% penetration)

26 local (news etc.)   n.a.

SVT1/2 (Swedish)    n.a.  (43% penetration)

TV-4     (Swedish)     n.a.  (35% penetration)

Eurosport                   n.a.  (44% penetration)

CNN                            n.a.  (41% penetration)

Discovery                   n.a.  (38% penetration)

MTV                            n.a.  (37% penetration)

Source: Carlsson and Harrie (2001)