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The media landscape in Denmark

The Danish media have a long tradition. The daily Berlingske Tidende was founded by Ernst Heinrich Berling and appeared for the first time on January 3, 1749 – while the country was still under absolute monarchy. In the 19th century a press landscape emerged which largely reflected the country's political landscape, with newspapers all belonging to one of the country's four parties. Today only the local paper Skive Folkeblad is owned by a party, the Danish Social Liberal Party.

Meerjungfrau
Foto: suswar, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-nc-sa/2.0

Most of the newspapers are run by foundations to ensure their independence. Economic constraints have forced dailies with different political orientations like Jyllands-Posten (right-wing liberal) and Politiken (social-democratic) to fuse in mergers, so that they are now run by the same publisher. A number of dailies with different political orientations are still available to readers, however. The conservative Berlingske group, which is considered the flagship of the Danish press, has changed ownership several times and is now in foreign hands.

The attempts of the major publishers to entice their rivals' readers with free newspapers plunged the companies into a ruinous struggle. Three free newspapers survived: Urban (owned by Berlingske Tidende), 24timer (Jyllands-Posten and Politiken) and MetroXpress (Swedish).

All the newspapers are active on the Internet. Most news is freely accessible, while background reports and access to the archives must often be paid for. The blogosphere is largely undeveloped. Most of the regularly maintained blogs are featured on newspaper websites.

Danmarks Radio is Denmark's national broadcasting corporation, operating both radio and television stations. The country's second TV channel, TV2, is a commercial channel which, however, is owned by the state and soon to be sold. There are no purely commercial television channels in Denmark. Only in radio broadcasting have commercial stations been able to establish themselves alongside the public stations. Danmarks Radio, which also broadcasts some local programmes, has an average broadcast range of 87 percent, while the commercial stations have a range of just under 60 percent. Because the Danes are such regular users of the Internet - over 80 percent have Internet access - the radio stations run their own websites, too.

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