Television in Denmark

Television in Denmark was established in the 1950s and was run by a monopoly with only one channel available until the 1980s.

The first television broadcasts in Denmark started on 2 October 1951. These were carried out by the national radio broadcaster Statsradiofonien and consisted of a one-hour broadcast three times per week. The broadcasts were initially limited to a few hundred homes in the capital area.

Daily broadcasts started in 1954. With the opening of the Gladsaxe transmitter, most of Zealand could watch television. The entire country was covered in 1960 when the transmitter on Bornholm opened. Statsradiofonien was renamed Danmarks Radio (DR) in 1959.

The first news programme, TV-Avisen, started in 1965. Colour television started test transmissions in 1967, with colour television becoming the norm in filming and broadcasting from 1970 on.

In 1983, DR started trials with the regional television station TV Syd. Local television started in many parts of the country, challenging the DR monopoly. The monopoly on national television ended on 1 October 1988, when TV 2 started. TV 2 was located in Odense on Funen and received funding from both advertising and the television license. Eight regional stations were established within TV 2, one of which was TV Syd. Interrupting programmes for commercials was illegal (and still is, as of 2012), so commercials were broadcast between the programmes.

The first private satellite channel broadcasting in the Scandinavian languages had started in 1987 and was known as TV3. A separate Danish version started in 1990. TV3 was broadcasting from the United Kingdom and could therefore avoid the Danish advertising laws. TV3 launched a sister channel known as 3+ in 1996, by merging its two former channels TV6 and ZTV.

DR launched a satellite channel on 30 August 1996. It was known as DR2, and the first channel changed its name to DR1 accordingly.

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