In this era of instant gratification and faltering attention spans, television executives have been forced to ponder how best to retain the patronage of a young audience. This was true for Norway’s national broadcaster, NRK, which ‘had noticed that its programming wasn’t reaching older teen girls’, and thus sought to revolutionise its relationship with younger demographics.
Spawning three web-based teen dramas – Skam, Lovleg, and Blank – NRK’s reorientation led to the development of an innovative new formula for engaging Gen Z audiences. With Skam’s successful four season reign ending in 2017, and Lovleg and Blank commissioned to ride on its coattails, it’s worth taking a look at NRK’s approach.
NRK’s success in speaking to a new generation lies in its championing of youth culture. Paying careful attention to the nuances of the various stages of adolescence, it has produced a suite of series designed to reflect the lives of modern Norwegian youth. Although Skam was released first, Lovleg acts as the induction to NRK’s teen trifecta. Currently nearing the end of its second season, this quirky series follows Gunnhild (Kristine Horvli), an awkward and lonely sixteen year-old girl starting at a new boarding school. Initially gimmicky in its handling of Gunnhild’s arrival at her dorm, Lovleg gradually grows into itself as it progresses, reflecting Gunnhild’s coming of age trajectory.
Leaving Lovleg to handle the sometimes crippling embarrassment of being a young teenager, NRK’s catalogue moves on to the glossy melodrama of older adolescence with Skam. Following a group of 17-19 year old friends in their final years of secondary school, Skam was comprehensive in its exploration of teen issues, including takes on sexuality, sexual harassment, mental health, and religion.
Graduating from school-based dramas, NRK’s collection goes on to target the more restrained theatrics of young adulthood with Blank. A quieter series than Skam or Lovleg, Blank’s first season features Ella (Cecile Amlie Conesa) as she navigates the post-school pressure of planning for the future. Its second season focuses on Zehra, a university pharmacy student with a DJ side hustle, solidifying Blank’s intention to become the television companion of today’s young adults.
NRK thus faithfully charts the process of growing up, highlighting age-specific issues along the way. NRK thus faithfully charts the process of growing up, highlighting age-specific issues along the way.
Setting NRK’s approach apart is its awareness of the ways in which entertainment consumption has evolved. Trading on the currency of social media updates, Skam trialled a novel release format, its plots unfolding through the online release of short clips in real time on a near daily basis. If the clip followed the characters in school at 11.23am on a weekday, it would be released at that exact time and day without forewarning. Each clip was then compiled into an episode at the end of a week. Lovleg and Blank have followed suit, the shows carving out a clever middle ground between the predictability of scheduled television and the unyielding nature of streaming services, where one is tempted to either binge a series or avoid the overwhelming commitment altogether.
Capitalising on the fact that online life unfolds on a multitude of platforms, NRK has been able to assert its storytelling prowess even further through direct use of social media. Instagram pages, seemingly helmed by the characters themselves, are frequently updated, while screenshots of their private Facebook messages and texts are circulated to fans to progress the overall plot of each show. Lovleg introduces Snapchat in its second season, with Gunnhild traversing a fledgling relationship to the backdrop of its chat function. NRK then collects all of this content onto the dedicated website of each show, creating vivid shrines to the average teenager’s daily phone activity. Even the design of these websites reflects the age demographic of each series, evolving from youthful multicoloured graphics on Lovleg’s website to more sophisticated minimalist designs on those of Skam and Blank.
NRK’s approach to shaping the television of the future, however, has been somewhat overlooked amidst Netflix’s development of interactive choose-your-own-adventure content, such as Bandersnatch and the upcoming You vs Wild series. Heralded as the ‘TV of tomorrow’, Bandersnatch created furore in January of this year when it ensnared viewers into making increasingly deterministic decisions regarding its protagonist’s fate. Netflix are set to build on this foundation with You vs Wild in early April 2019, where the audience will be expected to dictate the way in which various Bear Grylls survival missions unfold. The interactivity central to Netflix’s model is characterised by intensity and adrenaline as the audience is confronted with life and death situations. While these characteristics grab short term attention, they do not necessarily resonate with an audience enough to leave a long lasting impression. The interactivity central to NRK’s formula, on the other hand, is characterised by quiet authenticity and slow drama, qualities which ensure enduring devotion from an audience. The hype surrounding Bandersnatch, for example, was relatively short lived in comparison to the longevity of Skam, which became the ‘most-watched web TV show in Norwegian history’ over the course of its run, and has since spawned a whopping seven international remakes, all of them still airing in 2019.
Of course, there is room to push the boundaries of television’s capabilities in many ways and it does not have to be an either/or scenario. However, if the goal is to build loyal engagement from Gen Z audiences, NRK’s approach appears more sustainable in the long run. Through their pioneering web-based dramas, NRK are speaking directly to teens – and their target audiences are paying attention.
