The delegation from Yemen with their Danish counterpart at DR. Photo: Lotte Dahlmann/IMS

Yemeni MPs and TV managers visited the Danish Broadcast Corporation (DR) to be inspired by the Danish public service broadcasting experience

The purpose of the visit to Denmark hosted by International Media Support (IMS) was to give the group of five led by Mr. Abdo Mohamed Al-Hodaifi, Head of the Media and Culture Committee in the Yemeni Parliament, a clear idea of how public service broadcasting functions, its ideological background, the legal base and how it is financed.

The (now former) General Director of the Danish Broadcast Corporation (DR), Kenneth Plummer, welcomed the guests and gave a brief introduction to DR, explaining that “DR is focused on the production of news, documentaries, and entertainment in Danish as the core mandate of DR is to preserve and promote Danish culture and language”. Adding a few facts and figures to illustrate the success of DR, Plummer said that DR outranks other TV channels in terms of viewers and listeners.

Mr. Abdo Mohamed Al-Hodaifi wanted to know why – in Plummer’s view, Danes prefer DR to commercial channels.

In Yemen, public TV is state-controlled in the true sense of the word meaning that all material produced is controlled by the government. The best known alternative to state-controlled media is privately owned, commercial TV, which has been introduced in a number of Yemen’s neighbouring countries in recent years.

- The visit is important for the Yemenis because they are not familiar with the concept of public service, explains Antti Kuusi, IMS country coordinator for Yemen. He explains:

- Public service is the obligation to also provide services to minority groups in society which is of no interest to commercial broadcasters. Public service in the Danish and Scandinavian sense of the word also has an educational aim, which would be very important in Yemen. In addition to this it should strengthen and support national culture. And of course it's task is to produce unbiased quality news and current affairs programmes, says Antti Kuusi.

DR’s success according to Plummer

In response to the question of why Danes prefer DR to commercial TV, Kenneth Plummer explained that first of all, DR productions are of high quality and secondly, that Danes prefer to listen to radio and watch TV in their own language, Danish. He went on to say that this not only includes news, but also entertainment in Danish, which is quite expensive to produce. This leaves DR with a more comparative advantage, as the substantial investments needed have so far kept most commercial TV channels away from this field of production.

Gitte Rabøl, Director of editorial content at DR, added that part of the success is also attributed to the fact that the news production is subject to constant innovation:

- We produce news that is not only of high quality, but also entertaining, she said.

The visit of the group from Yemen was organised by IMS at a time where the Parliament in Yemen is currently reviewing new media law proposals, including a new broadcasting law.

Several proposals have been pending in the past couple of years and the process is closely monitored by Yemen's international donors who stress the need to secure freedom of the press in the new laws.

- In Denmark there is a strong tradition of public service and thus the visit gave the MPs and representatives from Yemen's public broadcaster a good idea of European tradition in this sector, says Antti Kuusi.