NG
But shouldn't the national public broadcasters in those respective countries have near exclusive rights to show the programmes in question?
They do have 'near exclusive' rights. The rebroadcast of neighbouring country channels is a specific exception. They are not part of any general packages - and are almost always a separate 'bolt on' aimed at ex-pats. The vast majority of viewers in Sweden won't have paid for access to NRK or DR/TV2 as an extra subscription on their pay-TV platform, and will only have access to the NRK and DR shows that SVT have acquired (i.e. bought) when they are broadcast on SVT channels or made available on SVT Play.
This is similar to the situation with the BBC in Benelux countries. The BBC have a commercial deal with platform operators that allows BBC One and BBC Two to be carried on their pay-TV platforms (though in this case they are often not a bolt-on but part of a general package due to the popularity of BBC channels). The BBC still sells shows to Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourgeois broadcasters - even though those shows may have been previously available to a smaller audience live on BBC channels at an earlier date. They are minor exceptions.
In Canada, ABC/NBC/CBS is available on most pay-TV but it's practically pointless because during the primetime hours, a feed from a Canadian network replaces those US network feeds.
Yes. That's pretty unique to Canada I believe, largely because Canadian and US stations broadcast the same shows at roughly the same times? That's very different to the NRK/DR/SVT and BBC situation where the shows could be being shown weeks, months or years later on their neighbouring broadcasters' channels.
If their practise is to dub the programmes into the broadcaster's main language, it would be understandable as Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes can't be expected to understand the other languages perfectly.
Dubbing is unheard of outside kids shows in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Subtitling is universally used for all shows aimed at those who can read, dubbing is kind of unheard of in those territories.
Swedish and Norwegian have an incredibly high level of mutual intelligibility, Norwegian and Danish have high levels of mutual intelligibility (less so a bit for Swedish and Danish), and English is nearly universally intelligible to the Dutch.
French and German language shows will also be subtitled not dubbed in Scandinavia (the same is now true in the UK by the way)
In Norway the subtitles for non-Norwegian language shows on NRK are entirely optional and rendered by the set top box (rather than being hard-subbed or burned-in), so if you speak English or understand Swedish, you don't have to watch with subtitles if you don't want to.
(When NRK showed 'The Bridge' which has Swedish and Danish dialogue (mirroring daily life where people don't speak each others' languages but understand them), the broadcast was entirely clean, and you could chose whether to have Norwegian subtitles or not. In Sweden and Denmark SVT and DR put hard burned in subtitles for the non-native language dialogue, and where conversations were mixed they also often subtitled their own language for consistency (it's quite confusing if you watch a scene with two characters talking but only one being subtitled)
noggin
Founding member
Availability of other national broadcasters
But shouldn't the national public broadcasters in those respective countries have near exclusive rights to show the programmes in question?
They do have 'near exclusive' rights. The rebroadcast of neighbouring country channels is a specific exception. They are not part of any general packages - and are almost always a separate 'bolt on' aimed at ex-pats. The vast majority of viewers in Sweden won't have paid for access to NRK or DR/TV2 as an extra subscription on their pay-TV platform, and will only have access to the NRK and DR shows that SVT have acquired (i.e. bought) when they are broadcast on SVT channels or made available on SVT Play.
This is similar to the situation with the BBC in Benelux countries. The BBC have a commercial deal with platform operators that allows BBC One and BBC Two to be carried on their pay-TV platforms (though in this case they are often not a bolt-on but part of a general package due to the popularity of BBC channels). The BBC still sells shows to Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourgeois broadcasters - even though those shows may have been previously available to a smaller audience live on BBC channels at an earlier date. They are minor exceptions.
Quote:
In Canada, ABC/NBC/CBS is available on most pay-TV but it's practically pointless because during the primetime hours, a feed from a Canadian network replaces those US network feeds.
Yes. That's pretty unique to Canada I believe, largely because Canadian and US stations broadcast the same shows at roughly the same times? That's very different to the NRK/DR/SVT and BBC situation where the shows could be being shown weeks, months or years later on their neighbouring broadcasters' channels.
Quote:
If their practise is to dub the programmes into the broadcaster's main language, it would be understandable as Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes can't be expected to understand the other languages perfectly.
Dubbing is unheard of outside kids shows in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Subtitling is universally used for all shows aimed at those who can read, dubbing is kind of unheard of in those territories.
Swedish and Norwegian have an incredibly high level of mutual intelligibility, Norwegian and Danish have high levels of mutual intelligibility (less so a bit for Swedish and Danish), and English is nearly universally intelligible to the Dutch.
French and German language shows will also be subtitled not dubbed in Scandinavia (the same is now true in the UK by the way)
In Norway the subtitles for non-Norwegian language shows on NRK are entirely optional and rendered by the set top box (rather than being hard-subbed or burned-in), so if you speak English or understand Swedish, you don't have to watch with subtitles if you don't want to.
(When NRK showed 'The Bridge' which has Swedish and Danish dialogue (mirroring daily life where people don't speak each others' languages but understand them), the broadcast was entirely clean, and you could chose whether to have Norwegian subtitles or not. In Sweden and Denmark SVT and DR put hard burned in subtitles for the non-native language dialogue, and where conversations were mixed they also often subtitled their own language for consistency (it's quite confusing if you watch a scene with two characters talking but only one being subtitled)