- published: 25 Jan 2010
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The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (Norwegian: Norsk rikskringkasting AS), usually known as NRK, is the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, and the largest media organisation in Norway. It is a founding member of the European Broadcasting Union.
94% of NRK's funding comes from a mandatory annual license fee charged to each person in possession of a TV. The remainder comes from commercial activities such as programme and DVD sales, spin-off products and certain types of sponsorship.
Regular radio broadcasts started in Norway in 1925, Kringkastningselskapet, a privately-owned company founded in 1933 and a predecessor to NRK. Based on a model similar to the BBC, and located in Oslo, it was a replacement for privately operated radio stations in the larger cities. NRK initially set out to get coverage over 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.
NRK1 is the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation's (NRK) main television channel. Test broadcasts started on 12 January 1954, regular test broadcasts started on 13 April 1958 and regular broadcasts started in 20 August 1960. It is Norway's oldest and largest television channel. Previously known as simply as "NRK", the channel now known as "NRK1", to distinguish itself from sister channel "NRK2", which started broadcasting in 1996.
Besides its own productions, the channel also broadcasts a significant amount of English-language programmes from the United States, Great Britain and Australia. Its news programme is called Dagsrevyen.
In 2010 NRK HD was launched, broadcasting at 720p. NRK HD was set to make its first official broadcasting from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics opening ceremony, but the first HD broadcast was actually Super Bowl XLIV, February 7, 2010.