Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation
 |
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| Publicly funded, public-service broadcaster | |
| Industry | Broadcasting |
| Founded | 1 July 1933 |
| Headquarters | Oslo, Norway |
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Key people
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Thor Gjermund Eriksen |
| Products | TV, radio, online services |
| Owner | Government of Norway |
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Number of employees
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3 649 (2015) |
| Website | www.nrk.no |
NRK (an abbreviation of the Norwegian: Norsk rikskringkasting AS, generally expressed in English as the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) is the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, and the largest media organisation in Norway. NRK broadcasts three national TV channels and three national radio channels on DVB-T, cable, satellite, IPTV, FM and DAB. It also runs several digital radio stations. All NRK radio stations can be heard on the website, NRK.no, which also offers an extensive TV service. NRK is a founding member of the European Broadcasting Union.
94% of NRK's funding comes from a mandatory annual license fee payable by anyone who owns or uses a TV or device capable of receiving TV broadcasts. The remainder comes from commercial activities such as programme and DVD sales, spin-off products and certain types of sponsorship. NRK's license income in 2012 was more than 5 billion kroner. In the autumn of 2015 the government announced that it planned to change the way NRK is financed. This is in part a reaction to the decline of TV ownership in Norway. Some kind of "media charge" is planned, but it is not yet clear how such a system would work. The feeling is that the current license system is not sustainable in the long term.
Kringkastningselskapet, a privately owned company and the predecessor of NRK, started regular radio broadcasts in Norway in 1925. NRK itself was founded in 1933. Based on a model similar to that of the BBC and located in Oslo, it was a replacement for privately operated radio stations in larger cities. NRK initially set out to cover the entire country and had a monopoly on broadcasting in Norway. The monopoly was gradually dissolved from 1975 onwards, resulting in the introduction of cable TV in 1982, regional TV channels and satellite TV in 1986 (culminating in the launch of TV3 in 1987 and TVNorge in 1988) and the launch of the second free-to-air channel TV 2 in 1992.
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