The changing role of a video-on-demand service in the strategies of public service media: A production study of Danish TV 2 Play and its impact on the production culture of the schedulers, 2016–2022

In this article, I highlight and discuss the main findings of three different media production studies conducted in 2016, 2019, and 2022 to investigate the changing production culture of schedulers in public service media (PSM). The aim is to show how the inclusion of a broadcaster video-on-demand (BVoD) service in the broadcaster's portfolio affected the production culture, with a focus on the strategies and practices of TV 2 in Denmark. TV 2 is a commercially funded PSM company with a 53 per cent share of viewership. TV 2 offers the second most popular video-on-demand (VoD) service in Denmark. Average time spent daily on the service in 2022 was 11 minutes, on par with the publicly funded PSM company DR's BVoD service. Both were just behind Netflix with 13 minutes (Nielsen Company, 2023).

The analysis of how the specific production culture in a “TV-native” company like TV 2 changes (Johnson, 2019) draws on Caldwell's (2008) definition of the concept of production culture, which entails the compiled cultural practises and belief systems among professional content producers. Together with Kirsten Frandsen, I have previously argued that the kind of content produced by a specific production culture needs to be included in the analysis (Bruun & Frandsen, 2022). The content itself is part of a genre schema, which is at the same time structuring the work in a production culture discursively and tacitly as well as being changed and adapted to new circumstances in the company and the industry at large. During the last decade, the schedule – that is, the television super text (Brown, 1984) – and the work of the schedulers have been confronted with growing competition for audiences from international subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services, and changing viewer habits in general. These developments are changing the conditions for the schedulers’ work.

In this article, I use the term scheduler as an umbrella term for several different functions in connection to planning and publishing content on different channels and services. I include heads of planning and publishing divisions and subsections of these divisions, as well as channel schedulers and publishing editors for the BVoD service. I also include the on-air producers in the different stages of the publishing process. The commissioning editors and heads of channels and content at TV 2 are not included in the term. I argue that from 2016 to 2022, profound changes occurred in the organisational framing of the BVoD service's role and its impact on production practices. Second, I show the BVoD service's impact on the content priorities among the schedulers at TV 2. And third, I show how the public service branding of TV 2 became more explicit in the production culture. However, across these three points of impact and the shifts in strategic focus at TV 2, the business model at TV 2 and its interplay with public service obligations run as an undercurrent. Based on these changes, I discuss what can be learned about the strategic and innovative capabilities of PSM in an on-demand media culture, from this short history of the changes to the role of the BVoD service. To discuss this question, I draw on research contributions that have identified different strategic responses by PSM companies to threats from changes in media technology and new competitors, such as the growing number of SVoD services.

The production culture at TV 2 seems to be relatively quick to adjust and adapt its practices to suit the changing patterns of use in an on-demand media culture. As a result, the PSM company (pro)actively shapes the sociocultural context in which it operates with the explicit aim of future-proofing itself in the industry. At TV 2, this process is strongly influenced by the above-mentioned undercurrent of the business model. Securing the business model seems to be the main driver behind the different strategies applied. Furthermore, an identity branding of TV 2 and its values seems to be important as a guide in the production culture on par with shifting strategic responses to technological change and uncertainties in the television industry.

In the following section, important research contributions to fuel this discussion are presented, followed by a section with key findings from the three production studies. Finally, these findings are discussed in the last section of the article.

During the 2010s, and in the wake of Netflix's international success in particular, media scholars contributed to the notion that traditional time-structured television was being superseded by on-demand access to audiovisual content (e.g., Lotz, 2017). Looking back, a lot of changes have indeed taken place in terms of the production, distribution, and everyday use of television and its content (Lotz, 2022). Competition from transnational (American) SVoD services in Europe has forced the traditional television industry to include in-house BVoD services in their portfolios. Across Europe, the average use of linear television is slowly declining: In 2021, it was 3 hours and 36 minutes a day but showing differences between age groups. 14–25-year-olds averaged 1 hour and 31 minutes, as opposed to the 60+ age group with 5 hours and 30 minutes a day (EBU, 2022). There are differences between the European countries, and in a highly digitalised country like Denmark, there has also been a dramatic average decline from 3 hours and 31 minutes of daily viewing in 2010 to 2 hours and 10 minutes in 2022. The differences between age groups are also supported, and 12–20-year-olds used linear television for only 15 minutes a day in 2022, as opposed to 3 hours and 45 minutes for 51–70-year-olds. The average use of streaming has nevertheless increased to 1 hour and 5 minutes a day in 2022, and the age gap is slowly closing (TV 2, 2023).

For some PSM companies, the overall decline in linear television use among the younger segments of the audience, and especially the overall decline in reach, have made the strategic use of their in-house BVoD services more important. For instance, Michalis (2022) has found a close link between the linear channels and the content of the BBC's iPlayer, and she highlighted the fluidity between “online and broadcast spheres” (Michalis, 2022: 526) and the continued relevance of traditional PSM, even though transnational SVoD services pose a threat in terms of rising production costs and loss of viewers, for instance. Michalis has referred to the case of BBC Three moving online in 2016 in pursuit of younger viewers for PSM, the result of which was a 70 per cent reduction in the number of these viewers. In 2019, BBC Three content was also distributed on BBC One to mitigate this problem. The lesson learned seems to be that the interplay between the two modes of watching television and continued linear television distribution was still important for PSM. Nevertheless, in her account of how the BBC iPlayer was used by the BBC in the “third phase of VoD services in the UK from 2014 to 2019” (Michalis, 2022: 528), Michalis highlighted the growing ambition of the BBC on the VoD market. The BBC developed the iPlayer from a seven-day catch-up service in relation to the content published on the linear channels, into a service which provided increased access for viewers to all new and old BBC content. Graige and Johnson (2018) have also described this development of the iPlayer's role in the publishing of public service content, in which the managerial discourse predicted as early as 2013 that the iPlayer would become a “front door” to the BBC's content.

A similar interest in understanding how PSM companies are trying to position themselves in the new ways of publishing television content has been investigated further by Donders (2019). Across four European countries and regions (Flanders, the Netherlands, the UK, and Ireland), the assumption is that the online publishing strategies of companies can be explained by market size, business models, and levels of funding as well as the political climate in which companies operate. Based on research contributions, Donders has distinguished between five phases, also termed stages, which seem to characterise the developments: first, an experimental phase; second, the panic phase; third, the expansion phase; fourth, the consolidation phase; and fifth, the maturity phase. Donders (2019: 1014) has argued that this set of stages is not “a linear model”, and it is followed by universal understanding of “the theoretical PSM construct” among the researchers. Donders has highlighted the fact that across research contributions, the shift towards a platform-neutral focus on content distribution is regarded as important if it adheres to the basic values of public service as a concept. Consequently, publishing becomes a far more complicated matter, and the focus is not just on the editorial output alone, but on the needs and wishes of society – that is, the citizens. According to Donders, the popularity of PSM becomes an important part of the theoretical PSM construct.

Donders's (2019) findings show that PSM companies react rather differently to shared challenges. The distribution strategies are marked by the market size and the exportability of the content as well as the business models, especially financial dependency on commercials. The BBC is regarded as having mature strategies compared with the other companies; however, all these companies aim to innovate and experiment. Furthermore, they all stick to linear publishing because of its continued popularity and the need to ensure the reach of television in all target groups as well as an increased emphasis on the public service brand. Across the four cases, the need for organisational change to achieve the planned distribution strategies was underscored, but the methods used in the study did not get behind the scenes to investigate what was going on inside the PSM companies.

A similar policy studies approach to the strategic responses by PSM companies faced with the popularity of SVoD services can be found in D’Arma and colleagues’ (2021) work. They have analysed the strategies of the BBC, RAI in Italy, and VRT in Flanders, using Napoli's (1998) conceptual framework. According to Napoli, the responses of legacy media to technological change are complacency, resistance, differentiation, and diversification, or mimicry. Napoli's framework was applied to the responses of the three companies and government regulations since early 2000. The regulators are complacent, and the only kind of resistance in evidence is the defence of the licence fee and the increase of quotas for domestic content production. Differentiation is a frequent discursive strategy across the three cases, flagging universal access, diversity in content, and national-cultural importance in specific genres like domestic drama. And finally, mimicry is also a frequent response, with D’Arma and colleagues highlighting many examples of this strategy. The BVoD services have, for example, changed from being catch-up services to being access points for content publication. Furthermore, they have increased the use of personalisation, and their BVoD interfaces have similar layouts and content categories as those found on the international SVoD services. Like Michalis, D’Arma and colleagues have also found examples of diversification or mimicry in collaborations between SVoD services and PSM, for example, Netflix and the BBC, or RAI and HBO. As in Donders's (2019) study, market size and funding are the main reasons for differences in strategies, and a pragmatic attitude and approach seem to characterise all PSM companies in the struggle to adapt and stay relevant.

The aim of this article is to contribute to this body of research, where differences with regard to market size and languages are pointed out as important explanations behind the different strategies. The focus is here placed on another small European market, and the methodological approach is media production studies instead of media policy research. In other words, we move behind the scenes of PSM companies and ask how the production culture of the schedulers is affected by technological change. Across my three studies, I regard schedulers as powerful and creative interpreters (Caldwell, 2008) who work in specific media-systemic contexts, and in specific cultural and historical contexts (Bruun, 2018). As I argue in the following section, the inclusion of new ways of publishing content and the development of new scheduling practices are therefore part of a rather powerful strategic response by PSM to shape the everyday use of PSM and future-proof its position in the television industry.

The BVoD service known as TV 2 Play is part of TV 2 Denmark. The company launched its BVoD service in 2004 under the name Sputnik and renamed it TV 2 Play in 2012. TV 2 is a publisher-broadcaster with very little in-house production, and it is a limited company owned by the Danish state. The company is funded by commercials and subscriptions, and its portfolio contains a main channel with public service obligations and a commercial division with six niche channels, the website (www.tv2.dk), and the BVoD service. This means that TV 2 Play has no public service obligations, even though content from the main channel is available on the platform. Furthermore, as I argue in the following section, the importance of the BVoD service has grown rapidly at TV 2 in the context of an emerging and overarching on-demand media culture. However, the regulatory framework, policies, and broadcasting licence governing TV 2 remain unchanged.

As mentioned above, the findings are based on three different studies at TV 2 in 2016, 2019, and 2022. These three studies were not done with this article in mind but were guided by the question of how scheduling as a professional practice in television was changing. All included questions on the role of the BVoD service, but the three studies also had different objectives and methodological approaches. The 2016 study was focused on the production of the on-air schedule in the multi-channel and multi-platform period of PSM. I conducted 16 face-to-face interviews with producers involved in the different stages of producing this text, and I investigated how social network media and the BVoD service was used in this work. In the field study, I followed the final gluing together of the on-air schedule and I attended the broadcast of the schedule on-air in the evening.

The 2019 study was aimed at understanding the development in the publishing practices on the linear channels in a television industry adapting to an emerging on-demand media culture. Based on the trust gained during the 2016 study, I was allowed to be part of the planning and publishing division at TV 2 for a period of six weeks. This field study included observing meetings on long-term publishing plans, economic conditions and issues, and changes to the daily plans. The detailed knowledge obtained was confidential, but the field study provided me with insight into the everyday practices and values guiding the production culture. It also served as an important background for six non-confidential face-to-face interviews with heads of publishing, the schedulers of the linear channels, as well as the head of the streaming service and editors.

Based on the deep-dive knowledge gained from the 2019 study, the 2022 study was focused on the way TV 2, as a company with public service obligations, integrated linear and non-linear television in the publication practices, with a focus on the role of TV 2 Play. This study included nine formal face-to face interviews and a field study of the daily work at the editorial desk of the streaming service for three days. The editorial desk was now physically a part of the planning and publishing division at TV 2 with all the schedulers, editors, and managers sitting in a new open office space in a circle. The division between the linear and non-linear television was in this way dissolved.

Across the three studies, two fundamental lessons learned connected to the media productions studies approach need a short elaboration. First and foremost, the issue of getting access to do a study behind the scenes in a media company in harsh competition was relatively easy in these studies compared with other studies I have done. As I argued together with Frandsen (2022), the reason can be a case of good timing. The benefits of knowledge exchange between research and the industry in a time of disruption and a shared notion of uncertainty about the future of television have no doubt furthered a trust in me and my research interests. This shared notion of uncertainty also helped me to obtain the extended access for the industry-stay in the planning and publishing division, including the many confidential meetings and documents, and so on, especially in the 2019 study. Furthermore, the schedulers are part of what they themselves call the engine room of television, and they are not used to any interest from media researchers. The simple fact of being interested in their work and regarding it as being of growing creative importance paved the way for me as an informed outsider.

A second fundamental lesson learned from the three studies is the difficulties connected to the confidentiality of some of the knowledge obtained in this kind of research using field studies as part of the data collection. On the one hand, the field studies gave me extremely informative and necessary knowledge to answer the research questions. On the other hand, some of the knowledge obtained was often given in confidentiality and impossible to use as documentation to strengthen the validity. In other words, access to the backstage comes with an impact on the dissemination of sensitive and economic details that is often impossible to avoid if the trust relationship is to be maintained for future media production studies. In the following presentation of findings, I mainly use the interview data from the 2022 study for quotes, given the space limitations of the article format.

The changes in the role of the BVoD service in the schedulers’ production culture elaborated in the section above reveal the way in which a multi-channel and target-group approach to scheduling has been transformed into a television platform and mainstream approach over a short period. This transformation was a response to changes in the television industry, viewing habits, and competition. It did not happen because of cultural-political policies or new regulations relating to PSM companies in Denmark. Instead, the three studies provide us with insight into how the actual development and adaptation of production processes and practices unfolded in a PSM company with a successful outcome so far.

To sum up, Table 1 contains an outline of the key shifts in the role of the BVoD service in the three studies, the shifts of focus in the production culture, the new content demands, and the adaption strategies at work. Across the three studies, the mix of strategies already elaborated also includes an important content strategy that is elaborated below.

As illustrated in Table 1, the different kinds of strategies and practices found in the three studies can be viewed as variations of the phases, stages, or prototypical responses identified by Michalis (2022), Donders (2019), and D’Arma and colleagues (2021), respectively. First and foremost, TV 2 Play quickly moved from the peripheries of the organisation's publishing strategies onto centre stage. The BVoD was cast as a front door, very much like the way the BBC presented the iPlayer in the “third phase of VOD services in the UK from 2014 to 2019” (Michalis, 2022: 535).

Compared with Donders's findings, the approach was an experimental response based on a high degree of uncertainty among the schedulers about how the television industry would develop. The schedulers had the freedom to experiment, but the aim was to secure the business model and to use the BVoD service to support this aim. As pointed out by Donders as well as D’Arma and colleagues, the specific financial context and the business model to a large degree explain the strategic responses of the companies. This conclusion is supported by the findings in my production studies. The protection of the business model can be viewed as a resistance strategy to technological change and an almost tacit and conservative component in the production culture. However, the public service obligation was argued to be compatible with a commercially viable differentiation strategy in the editorially driven publishing practices and genre priorities at TV 2. Elements of a mimicry strategy could also be found. TV 2 Play was first targeted at young audiences, and later it became an aggregator and incorporated content from embedded SVoD services with an aim of building a large catalogue, retaining subscribers, and competing with international SVoD services. In this way, it was a kind of platformisation strategy that was driving the company strategy known as “Strategy 2025 – Play for All”.

All in all, the findings of the production studies show an almost chaotic mix of company strategies and different responses to changes in media technology. As D’Arma and colleagues (2021) have pointed out, these responses and strategies are by no means mutually exclusive. The findings speak to the ability of the production culture to formulate and apply transient strategies, which enabled a specific course for a while. It is also debatable whether factors other than technology, the business model, and changing viewer habits were drivers of the changes in the role of the BVoD service in the production culture at TV 2.

One important additional factor that was referred to across the three studies is what I would like to term a content strategy guided by explicit values with which TV 2 wanted to be associated as a PSM company. In 2015, TV 2 launched an identity-branding campaign called “All that we share”. This campaign went public in 2017 and still guides programme commissioning and content production at TV 2. The public part of the campaign consists of long promotional videos and short interstitials published on the linear channels and on social media. All elements of the campaign are pathos driven and argue that homogeneity – or shared experiences, feelings, and problems – is a value that unites us despite our differences (sexual, ethnic, demographic, class, etc.). The promotional video ends with a punchline: “Perhaps we have more in common than we think? TV 2: All that we share” (TV 2 Play, 2017a, 2017b). This homogeneity contains universal emotions, for example, the courage to be different or to take on a huge responsibility, emotional ties, guilt, and forgiveness. The homogeneity is augmented by egalitarian values. All the elements in the campaign feature ordinary Danes as the main participants, and if public figures are involved, they represent the same universal emotions. Across the three studies of the production culture, this content strategy was used as a navigation tool in discussions and in publishing decisions across platforms, in close cooperation with the head of content commissioning and the commissioning editors. The chaotic mix of strategies was in many ways counterbalanced by this strong value-based understanding of the kind of content that TV 2 wanted to publish and be associated with. Furthermore, it was easy for the schedulers to merge this content strategy with the public service brand identity.

As pointed out in this article, the strategic responses to technological change found in the three production studies in many ways support the results of media policy research into how PSM adapts to an on-demand media culture. However, my approach also adds new aspects to how and why PSM is changing based on a detailed study of the day-to-day practices of the schedulers, who have a key strategic and creative influence on the kind of content PSM offers.

In the case of TV 2, the overall result of the different transient strategies was a platformisation and mainstreaming of the BVoD service, and a priority of cultural proximity across genres. Furthermore, the production culture was guided by the “All that we share” content strategy in a way that was seen as compatible with flagging a public service television identity. These key changes secured the position of the PSM company and its continued popularity in the small Danish audiovisual market.

TV 2's business model runs as an undercurrent, and its interplay with public service obligations are by no means unproblematic. First, the conceptualisation of the audience in the content strategy guiding the production culture might, however, come across as culturally claustrophobic and nationally complacent. The values stressing homogeneity might also be at odds with the core public service value of sociocultural diversity. Second, the commercial funding and the BVoD service's position as a commercial activity within the TV 2 company might fuel a risk-reduction that is stifling content experiments even for a mainstream audience. This unwillingness to take risks is at odds with core public service values like quality and innovation.

The focus on a mainstream audience and the need for bull's-eye programming to attract and retain this kind of audience for financial and cultural-political reasons might have additional embedded problems. First, the need for bull's-eye programmes could mean a reduced willingness to take creative risks like publishing content that might divide the viewers, or content that does not meet key performance indicators. These kinds of well-known measures for risk reduction in the television industry could lead to a growing dependency on successful formats and new seasons of proven successful content in all genres, instead of promoting new and original content. Second, the platformisation of the BVoD service and the need for bull's-eye programmes do not seem to favour a portfolio that includes a creative sandbox element that could stimulate an experimental strategy that addresses the current unpredictability in the television industry. For a publisher-broadcaster company with public service obligations such as TV 2, an unwillingness to take risks could be a major problem regarding public service core values, jeopardising TV 2's cultural-political status in the eyes of the regulators.

Finally, there is in many ways a ticking bomb embedded in the platformisation of the BVoD service and its present success. The platformisation of TV 2 Play moves one of TV 2's commercial activities to the front of the company's portfolio. Even if the schedulers increasingly flagged the public service brand, it could be seen as a growing commercialisation of TV 2 that pushes the main channel back and puts it on par with TV 2's purely commercial activities. For a state-owned PSM company, this drive towards enhanced commercialisation might not be politically sustainable in the long run. As Donders (2021: 117) stated, some PSM companies engage in commercial activities that jeopardise their legitimacy: “It might bring in revenues, but undermines the universality, quality or trustworthiness of their offer and at the same time it harms pluralism and diversity in the rest of the market”. In the Danish context, the tax-funded PSM organisation DR is currently also in the process of transforming its streaming service, DRTV, into a front-door service with a mainstream focus (Bruun & Bille, 2022). Compared with TV 2, DR's funding model excludes commercial activities. However, the mainstream focus might entail similar challenges with the core values of public service regardless of the funding model.

To investigate such questions concerning the challenges of PSM, similar productions studies of other commercially or publicly funded PSM companies and their strategies and practices would be fruitful. A continued comparative research effort into how specific PSM companies try to adapt to the emerging on-demand media culture could highlight the impact these adaptions might have on the ideal of public service media and the democratic ambitions associated with the phenomenon.