November 2025 Film and TV column
By Anders Lorenzen
Emil Poulsen in Ultra Vildt, DR’s new Youtube channel. Photo: ©Lajr.
The Nordic countries are not immune to the shifting trends in how people consume and watch content. In a battle to retain the under-30 audiences, several Nordic broadcasters are finally adopting YouTube as a streaming platform.
Despite concerns about YouTube’s role in unhealthy viewing habits and exposure to inappropriate content for children, SVT, NRK and DR are expanding their presence on the world’s largest streaming platform. Even the Danish commercial but free-to-air broadcaster, TV 2 Denmark, is planning to expand its YouTube presence.
The move by the broadcasters is not without risks or concerns as YouTube retains control over user data.
Moreover, the way YouTube’s algorithm rewards engagement and virality can sit uneasily with the core objective of public service broadcasting – to educate its audiences and reach diverse groups. But on the flipside, like in the case when the same broadcasters sold content to streaming giants such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney, and Apple – it can attract hug global audiences that would never have found the content otherwise.
DR has shed some light on the type of content it will be making available on YouTube, as on 1 October 2025, it launched a natural science channel on the platform, aimed to educate the 9-14-year-old audience about nature and science.
DR seems to be ahead of the other Nordic national broadcasters in specifically tailoring and producing content for YouTube, with the others, for now, using the platform as a marketing platform as well as cross-posting specific short-form content on the platform.
The recent move by the Nordic broadcasters reflects a growing concern that public service broadcasting is drifting towards irrelevance or even extinction. In that perspective, digital technologies are seen as vital, not just to attract new audiences but to stay alive. What form that reinvention will ultimately take, however, is still uncertain, as new platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok increase concerns about the marriage of public-service values and platform-based logic.
Anders Lorenzen is a Danish blogger and film and TV enthusiast living in London.
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