TV 2 Charlie

World Screen Weekly, August 17, 2006

CHANNEL: TV 2 Charlie, Denmark

LAUNCH DATE: October 1, 2004

OWNERSHIP: TV 2 Charlie is a subsidiary of state-owned TV 2 Danmark.

NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS: The channel is distributed via cable and satellite and reaches 50 percent of the Danish TV market.

DESCRIPTION: Financed by subscription fees and advertising, TV 2 Charlie is aimed at a 50-plus audience. Its current market share within this demo is around 3 percent, making it Denmark’s fourth most-viewed channel amongst Danes over 50. So far, in 2006, TV 2 Charlie has been Denmark’s fastest-growing TV channel.

PROGRAM DIRECTOR, TV 2 DANMARK: Palle Strom

MANAGING DIRECTOR, TV 2 NETWORKS: Keld Reinicke

PROGRAMMING STRATEGY: “TV 2 Charlie is a difficult channel to categorize because there really aren’t any other channels anywhere in the world targeting this demo,” says Keld Reinicke, the managing director of TV 2 Networks. “It has elements of UKTV Gold and ITV3, but it really isn’t like any of them exactly.”

TV 2 Charlie, however, does have a marked British feel to it. “The formats and finished programming we acquire for the channel are predominately British,” Reinicke says. “This is not a demo that is ‘hip with the U.S.,’ and it has a marked taste for British shows, especially crime dramas such as Inspector Morse and pretty much any crime drama that you might find on BBC One or ITV1.”

Nor are the anglophile tastes of TV 2 Charlie’s audience confined to a regular dose of homicide. “British costume drama is another popular staple,” continues Reinicke. “We took all the Jane Austen adaptations, and Heartbeat (ITV’s ’60s police soap) is the most popular show on TV 2 Charlie.”

The channel has also had a big hit with veteran British talk show host Michael Parkinson. So much so that it has decided to find its own homegrown version. He’s called Michael Meyerheim, and for the past ten years he has presented TV 2’s breakfast show. Meyerheim will debut in September.

Music is also an important part of the TV 2 Charlie line-up, and, in addition to concerts, the channel has recently run two themed weeks, one around Elvis, and the other around The Beatles.

Prime time comes early on TV 2 Charlie, “between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.,” Reinicke estimates, “just before its audience switches to watch one of the terrestrials.”

Although only 10 percent of TV 2 Charlie’s schedule is made up of local production, with the other 90 percent filled with acquisitions, Reinicke is keen to point out the success of a local format, Seven Grumpy Men. “It takes seven of the sort of people who write about how much better life was twenty years ago, and makes them engage with modern life, for example by only allowing them to communicate by texting.” It was, he reveals, “very funny and very popular.”

HOT TOPICS: The hot topic is undoubtedly the forthcoming Danish switch to digital, scheduled for 2009. This switch represents a threat to the existence of TV 2 Charlie, as Reinicke tacitly acknowledges in his assertion that “TV 2 Charlie will survive the digital switch if we are able to establish it as a unique branded TV channel for the 50-plus demo in Denmark, and we have two years of analogue left in which to do this. I strongly believe we will do it, and Charlie will survive.”

WEBSITE: charlie.tv2.dk

—By Bob Jenkins