Litteraturen i NRK Fjernsynet 1960-64

Abstract

From its start in august 1960 and for thirty years, NRK Television was the only tv-channel in Norway. This placed NRK in a powerful position, having control of cultural and literary dissemination both on the screen an in the broader public sphere. In this study, we have, with the help of program references, metadata from NRK and available programs in NRK's online archive, examined what literary programs or program parts were broadcasted in the first four tentative years, and in what ways this literature was made visible to viewers. Through a tentative categorization of the material, we arrive at a four-space model where we distinguish between performative and informative modes of presenting literature; while at the same time we find that the socio-cultural use of literature can be respectively autotelic or ritual. The categorization and the model are both discussed as possible supplements to the toolbox of the sociology of literature.