The story
DR was founded on 1 April 1925 under the name of Radioordningen, which was changed to Statsradiofonien in 1926, then to Danmarks Radio in 1959, and to DR in 1996.
During the German occupation of Denmark in World War II, radio broadcasts were censored – under particularly harsh conditions from August 1943 – leading many Danes to turn to Danish-language broadcasts from the BBC or the illegal press, as well as Swedish radio in 1944–1945.
Statsradiofonien's second FM radio station, Program 2 (P2), was added in 1951, followed by P3 in 1963.
Experimental television broadcasts started in 1949, with regular programming beginning on 2 October 1951 with the launch of Denmark's first television channel. Daily programming began in 1954. Colour television test broadcasts were started in March 1967, with the first large-scale colour broadcasting occurring for the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France. Danmarks Radio officially ended its "test" transmissions of colour television on 1 April 1970, although it wasn't until 1978 that the organisation's last black-and-white television programme (TV Avisen—The News) went over to colour.
In 1968, Danish television introduced television satire as a new entertainment genre. The production of satirical series by the entertainment department at DR occurred during a time when DR held a monopoly on radio and television broadcasting from 1925 to 1988, and from 1951 onwards, respectively.
At 14.00 local time on 16 May 1983 DR launched its first teletext information service, which is still available on all DR channels.
Danmarks Radio's monopoly on national television lasted until 1988, when TV2 started broadcasting. 8 years later DR launched their second television channel, DR2, on 30 August 1996. It was sometimes called den hemmelige kanal (lit. 'the secret channel') in its early years because it could not be seen nationwide at its launch.
The first trials of DAB were carried out in 1995, with eight channels officially launching in October 2002.
Read the full text
In 2006, as part of its relocation to DR Byen, DR was rebranded with a new logo designed by Front Nordic.
On 7 June 2007, DR launched an online-only news channel DR Update. It was later added as a traditional channel. With the switch to over-the-air digital signals on 1 November 2009, DR added three new channels to its lineup
DR K - an intercultural, documentary and "odd-film" channel.
DR HD – Denmark's first free-to-air high-definition channel intended to air successful shows from the other DR channels in true HD only, with no upscaling.
DR Ramasjang, a children's channel.
In 2013, a new logo in which the letters "DR" featured in a white sans-serif font on a black background was introduced, and the line-up of television channels was changed once again. A new channel targeting young people, DR3 replaced DR HD. Another channel for children, DR Ultra replaced DR Update. The closure of DR Update was the start of a revamping of DR 2 as a channel for news and society.
A nationwide switch from DAB to the newer DAB+ format took place on 1 October 2017. All of DR's stations plus the privately owned, public service channel - Radio24Syv, moved to the second national DAB+ multiplex (DAB-blok 2).
Relocation of DR and funding crisis
During 2006–07, DR moved all of its activities from Radiohuset in Frederiksberg and TV-Byen in Søborg to a new complex in the Ørestad area of Copenhagen. The new building, called DR Byen (lit. 'the DR city'), covers an area of approximately 133,000 m2 (1,431,600 sq ft).
The project became more expensive than planned, forcing DR to make drastic budget cuts. In April 2007, it was announced that 300 employees would be laid off, meaning that most of the sports department would be closed down as well as most of the educational department, several programmes and the radio channel DR X. DR would also give up its rights to the Olympic Games and attempt to sell the rights to a number of other sports events including football.
As the major recipient of license funds, DR operates under a public service contract with the government which it was unable to fulfil in the wake of the budget crisis related to the move. The budget overspends caused a major scandal which saw senior management of DR replaced, and was followed by a heated political debate over whether the service should receive additional emergency funding. Various measures to mitigate the impact on the public service obligations of the institution were contemplated by the Danish Parliament, and a compromise was agreed to limit the impact of the deficit.
From Wikipedia’s article on DR (broadcaster), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5