Looking for gamers where they are: Norwegian broadcasting from television to Twitch

Abstract

In 2022–2023, the gaming house LL35, live-streamed on Twitch.tv, was the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s (NRK) content strategy to reach one of the most elusive audiences: male gamers between 18–29. This article discusses the case of LL35 in the light of Norwegian media policy, with particular focus on the Norwegian public service mandate. Through an analysis of how the content and scheduling of the live Twitch broadcasts developed over the span of its first year of existence, informed by interviews with the production crew behind LL35, we discuss whether LL35 was able to live up to the public service mandate and how LL35 can be part of preparing NRK for the competition in a world of (inter)networked broadcasting. The article centers on two research questions: How did the content and scheduling of LL35 develop over time, and to what degree could this development enable NRK to fulfill its commitment to offer public service content to its target group? The research shows that despite the will for innovation in NRK, combining the social media logic of Twitch and the media logic of NRK was a challenge. It also underlined the mutual dependency of legacy television and streaming, and how their roles shift. The theoretical foundation for the study is a combination of perspectives from media policy studies with insights from research on esports, game streaming and Twitch, and studies of public service youth content.

Introduction

In a media landscape where legacy media are being challenged by social and global media platforms, one of the main challenges of Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) is the migration of young audiences to online streaming platforms. This tendency, frequently discussed in terms of the ‘youth challenge’ and the situation of the ‘lost generation’ (Sundet, 2023), has led PSBs to pursue new strategies to re-engage with young audiences to reinforce their future legitimacy (Sundet and Lüders, 2022). Statistics Norway shows that while 46% of the Norwegian population had used television on an average day in 2021, 93% had used the Internet. Of men, between 16–24, 32% had used linear television on dedicated channels and on live Internet TV, while 96% had used the Internet, here counting apps such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram as well as browser use (Schiro, 2022). For comparison, daily cable television use in the US, 2022, for the age group 18-34 was at 8% (Stoll, 2023).

To connect with this demographic, Norwegian Public Broadcasting Company (NRK) has employed new content that actively taps into third-party social media platforms popular among the youth (Lindtner and Dahl, 2018; Spilker et al., 2020; Sundet, 2023; Sundet and Lüders, 2022). The latest approach in this strategy includes daily live broadcasts from the gaming house LL35 on Twitch.tv, which is explicitly employed for the purpose of reaching one of the most elusive audiences: male gamers between 18 and 29.

This article discusses the case of LL35 in the light of Norwegian media policy, with particular focus on the Norwegian public service mandate. The public service mandate as understood in Norway has been important to maintain a high level of engagement in the population, and we use this case to discuss how PSBs can develop in the face of the social media logic younger users are familiar with. We follow the development and change of LL35 through its 1 year of existence and interviews with the production crew behind LL35. Informed by this we question how a public service broadcaster can live up to the public service mandate when using streaming to prepare for the competition in a world of (inter)networked broadcasting. Thus, two research questions guide the discussion: How did the content and scheduling of LL35 develop in face of the competing media and social media logics, and to what degree could this development enable NRK to fulfill its commitment to offer public service content to an elusive target group? In terms of theory, we will combine perspectives from media policy studies (Syvertsen et al., 2014) with insights from research on esports and game streaming (Johnson, 2024b; Taylor, 2018) and studies of public service youth content (Sundet, 2023; Sundet and Lüders, 2022).

The article’s argument is based on the case of LL35, covering its first year of operation spanning from launch in June 2022 until NRK announced a new direction for LL35 in June 2023 focusing on more curated content and shorter live occurrences. The study consists of an analysis based on watching LL35 streams in three periods during June 2022, October 2022, and June 2023. This was complemented by interviews with two members of the production team, project manager and editor.

The article is structured in the following way: The first part outlines the methodological approach, while the following part presents the theoretical background focusing on media policy in Norway and the positioning of LL35 within the frames of the ideology of the media welfare state (Syvertsen et al., 2014). Next we introduce Twitch.tv and LL35 as the case of the article, including a discussion of the genre placement of the show and the development of LL35 over the span of the first year. The following analysis looks at LL35 as a broadcasting phenomenon, using Taylor’s concept of networked broadcasting before moving on to discuss whether LL35 fulfills the principles of public service broadcasting. In our discussion, we critically engage with the most important dilemmas NRK faced with LL35 in light of the public service mandate. The final conclusion points out that while LL35 has certainly been an interesting exploration from a PBS perspective, it does demonstrate some real challenges that PBSs face when moving from a legacy media logic and to a social media logic.

Methodology

Data source triangulation (Patton, 1999) was necessary to understand whether LL35 fulfilled the public service mandate. We studied the show itself as well as the strategy behind the editorial choices. Our methodological approach was exploratory, using a mixed qualitative approach combining textual analysis and observation where we studied excerpts of the streams covering both curated and non-curated programming, complemented by interviews with two members of the production team.

In order to study the development of the concept over time, we chose three periods for close study; June 27–July 1, 2022, October 3–7, 2022, and June 4–8, 14 and 26, 2023. We studied the original streams during their live broadcast. Both authors took notes during the observation periods, focusing on documenting the flow of the activities and conversations in the house. After the three periods of study, we integrated the notes and compared the three phases according to their dramaturgy.

In order to be able to conduct an analysis of LL35’s ability to fulfill the public service mandate, the observation periods were complemented by semi-structured interviews with the production team’s project manager and editor. They gave us insight into the background and NRK’s justification for LL35, both as broadcasting innovation and more generally, as a live documentary of the lives of the personalities in the house. We have used these interviews mainly to inform the observations and NRK’s choices made concerning the editorial freedom of the streamer profiles occupying LL35, to understand the concerns of the editing team in the development of the project, and to a better understand how and why technical and editorial decisions were made.

The study followed ethical guidelines and was registered with the national authority for research data.

Theoretical background: media policy in Norway

Norway has an active and inclusive cultural policy concerning the media sphere. Norwegian media policy is closely related to the socio-economical system in the Nordic countries, commonly known as the Nordic welfare state. The relationship between the welfare state and the media is important for establishing a sense of national identity and for the enlightenment and information of citizens. Norway is known for a uniquely high consumption of news, mainly through local media. State interventions have been combined with the principle of freedom of speech, resulting in an adaptive, high-legitimacy public media sector that has lived side by side with commercial media companies (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 1). Trine Syvertsen and colleagues call this organizational principle the media welfare state and argue that this principle for organizing Nordic media is based on four principles: universal services, editorial freedom, a cultural policy for the media, and policy measures that are based on broad political consensus and that involve consultation with both public and private stakeholders (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 2). This is the background for the drive to reach elusive demographics, such as the young men targeted by LL35.

Public service broadcasting

Public service broadcasting is a media welfare state cornerstone. Based on an ideal established by the BBC in the 1920s and further developed by Northern and Western European broadcasting institutions, the Nordic public service broadcasters are well funded, with high legitimacy as well as authority (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 71). While publicly owned and financed by the state through license or media taxation, PSBs have institutional freedom from editorial interference from the state (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 2, 71). They have a democratic obligation to be the fourth estate, a watchdog critical towards the power that be (Schwebs et al., 2020: 62). Public service broadcasting is aligned with classical ideals of the public sphere and the enlightenment of citizens (Syvertsen, 2008: 213), and is regarded as a common good, where universal coverage is a goal (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 73). The Nordic cultural policies, including media policies, are anchored in democratic arguments stressing the role of media in offering the citizenship education, participation and representation across a breadth of cultural forms, content and use (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 5); alongside protectionist arguments stressing the importance of cultural diversity and the need to conserve the cultural heritage, national identity and language by offering quality content to children and youth (Pratt, 2005: 40). NRK is obligated to follow the public service principles specified both in their bylaws (NRK, 2023), in the government white paper on media policy (The Ministry of Culture, 2019), and in the legislation (The Broadcasting Act, 1992). NRK’s mandate is to provide access to a broad range of public service content to the entire population, as in relevant, high-quality and innovative programming to all age groups and social segments, including regular programming for young people in the Norwegian language (NRK, 2023). NRK is also obliged to be present on all important media platforms, and bylaws specifically mention an obligation to develop in-house content for children and youth on the Internet (§50). Sundet shows that the NRK’s corporate strategy also reinforces this focus on youth through an explicit focus on prioritizing younger audiences. However, while NRK formerly focused on the expansion onto third-party platforms, now their goal is to use such platforms to promote their own content, communicate with the community, and to ensure that audiences are ‘brought back’ to NRK’s services and platforms (Sundet, 2023). If we look for some of the most prominent aspects of the NRK statement of commitment, NRK has several articles that point to universal availability, diversity, representation, balance between enlightenment and entertainment, and participation (articles 14, 15, 19, 21, 26, 32, 42, 51) (NRK, 2023). Considering the importance of the statement of commitment, known as NRK-plakaten, we will address these articles specifically in our analysis below. We also want to mention articles 24, 40 and 52, which all pertain to the development of new formats and new knowledge on new platforms.

Videogames and the media welfare state

In the light of the principles of the media welfare state, it is unsurprising that the Nordic countries have policies and support measures directed towards videogames (Sotamaa et al., 2020). Parallel to the emergence of a national game industry, Norwegian authorities have established a cultural policy for videogames. While this policy’s central component is a funding scheme for game development modeled after the support measures for film which is today administrated by the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) (Jørgensen, 2009, 2013, 2019; Sotamaa et al., 2020), the current Norwegian cultural policy for videogames also includes gaming, game culture, and the use of videogames in a broader context (The Ministry of Culture, 2019). For Norwegian authorities, the Norwegian videogame policy is attributed to securing citizens access to Norwegian cultural products in a globalized media world (Jørgensen, 2013). Democratic and protectionist arguments have framed the Nordic game policies, which first centered around the protection of youth against speculative and harmful foreign content and later also includes ideas of games and gaming as an important cultural practice and active pastime, as well as arguments in favor of stimulating and supporting a Nordic game industry (Jørgensen, 2013: 10; Sotamaa et al., 2020; Robertson, 2011: 61).

It is thus not far-fetched that a PSB would include games and gaming as part of their content. NRK game coverage has historically been sporadic, and game journalism is a rare and tentative form here, as it is internationally. While game news and reports have featured inside other programming directed towards youth, there has been no lasting television or radio programming focusing on games. On the web NRK has explored different forms of game content with varied success. NRK.no has had regular game reviews at least since 2008, but there has been no coordinated effort to cover game culture (Rodem, 2020). During the noughties, NRK experimented with implementing web-based games in NRK’s web content, for instance the Mujaffa game, adopted from Danish broadcasting DR (Moe, 2009: 267–269; Syvertsen et al., 2014: 88–89). NRK also offered a portal for web-based games based on their own programming (Jørgensen, 2009: 325, 327). This format has remained standard on the very popular children’s channel NRK Super, where quizzes and trivia associated with news and entertainment for children are popular. NRK Super has been a frontrunner for NRK’s game coverage. In collaboration with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), NRK launched the downloadable adventure game Superia as an extension of their children’s channel NRK Super, announcing that it would be ‘a fourth content platform next to TV, radio, and web’ (Pedersen, 2009).

In 2015, NRK’s children’s channel Super launched their YouTube channel Flippklipp with a focus on games content directed towards games, establishing streamed game content as the focus point for NRK in their exploration of games. In 2017, NRK introduced its first esports endeavors, streaming ESL Pro League for the Counter-Strike finale (Våge, 2017; Waatland, 2017a, 2017b). In 2018, NRK launched P3 Gaming, another YouTube channel for young adult gamers. The channel ran for a year before it was shut down (Pang, 2019). In 2019, NRK announced that they were launching a strategy for better game coverage and hired one of Norway’s most experienced game journalists to run it (Rodem, 2020). The establishment of the LL35 project signaled that NRK was willing to expand their strategy by exploring new ways of integrating games as part of the content offered.

Case: what are Twitch.tv and LL35?

Twitch.tv, or simply Twitch, is an online streaming platform that allows users to set up their own channel for live streaming for an online audience participating on chat. While the platform is dominated by streaming videogame play (Payne, 2022; Sjöblom and Hamari, 2017), it is not restricted to such content neither technically nor by user regulation, and Twitch includes content ranging from esport tournaments and commented gameplay streams by gamers, to streamers reading or eating, as well as rebroadcasts of older media content (Taylor, 2018: 63).

LL35 is the name of NRK’s latest gaming project aiming at young audiences and particularly young men. LL35 was streamed live on Twitch, while some programming was also made available as recorded episodes both on Twitch and the native platform of NRK.no. The show centers on the lives and activities of gaming profiles and influencers living in a house upgraded with the technological infrastructure to serve as full-scale production facilities for streaming gaming live around the clock, featuring a state-of-the-art gaming room, equipped with cameras everywhere except the private rooms and bathrooms of the building. The address of the house is Langs Linjen 35 in Oslo, hence the show’s abbreviated name LL35. When NRK launched the concept in May 2022, the aim was a 24-7 livestream.

According to the project’s manager, the original mandate for the project was to mirror gaming culture and give the target group of young men a sense of recognition and community by showing that their interest was worthy of being broadcast. To do so, they wanted to use a platform (Twitch) and format (streaming) familiar to the target group, as well as inviting profiled streamers and other personas already known to the target group to live in and stream from the house. The aim was to come close to the structure of a Twitch stream to create a familiar environment for the target demographic (Sjöblom et al., 2017: 26). LL35 aspired to become a familiar everyday presence, establishing their stream as part of the daily habit for gamers, and to create a community (Interview manager, November 8, 2022). This is a part of Twitch’s qualities that take it closer to established, linear broadcasting channels, aiming for a convergence of audiences (Gamir-Ríos et al., 2024: 2).

LL35 is best categorized as a casual stream, focusing on a loose exploratory structure and affective audience motivations (Sjöblom and Hamari, 2017: 164). LL35 originally aimed for a continuous livestream all day, with roughly 15 hours of active and occasionally curated content and 9 hours of automated. However, the team struggled with technical issues and soon had to roll back the idea of all day streaming, leading to complaints by the audience when they logged in to watch gaming only to be served a static camera stream overlooking the harbor (Email manager, April 8, 2024). The high technical ambitions of LL35 did not emulate the affordances of Twitch, which rely on the simplicity of a web-cam and a microphone, the ubiquitous base for streaming (Sjöblom et al., 2017: 26). Instead, these ambitions created several technical problems, and as of June 2023, the livestream was only available from 3 p.m. every day apart from specified off-days for the profiles. LL35’s content was heavily oriented towards the profiles occupying the house. These were profiled streamers in the Norwegian gaming community and the occasional media celebrity. They lived in the house for up to 3 months and the programming was closely tailored to their interests, personalities, and expertise. Streams also featured the occasional profiled guest visiting for specific themes and broadcasted Norwegian esports events.

To support the community, LL35 also had an accompanying Discord channel featuring information from the production staff about scheduling and rules, alongside on- and off- topic discussions between the community and the production staff, moderators, and profiles. Discord is a communication platform that facilitates communication via text, voice, and video, developed for players in need of coordinating efforts relating to online games (Arifianto and Izzudin, 2021). As for Twitch, the software is not restricted to game content.

Genre placement: public service reality slow tv streaming hybrid?

In early descriptions of the concept, journalists repeatedly referred to LL35 as ‘Gaming’s Big Brother’ (Henriksen, 2022; Svelstad and Eliassen, 2022). This reference indicates similarities with the early reality genre. Big Brother was developed by a Dutch firm in 1999 (Drotner, 2017: 11; Svelstad and Eliassen, 2022) and introduced a new genre of reality shows where the audience observe the lives of volunteers in competition or just going about their lives. Like Big Brother, LL35 tapped into the attraction of being able to monitor the lives of selected young people within the confines of a house. It engaged the audience through immediacy and proximity, as well as one-sided interaction with familiar media characters, or parasocial interaction (Liebers and Schramm, 2019). The description of LL35 as the Big Brother of gaming also resonates with the initial criticism of the show. One of the early controversies arose after an episode where the profiles and their guests were hanging out in the house, drinking beer, discussing techniques for scoring girls, until the situation escalated into alleged drunk driving. While the chain of events was not surprising – we are after all watching a group of bored young people with no specific task beyond simply being themselves – the criticism aimed at this particular event for the way it idolized idleness and alcohol consumption was justified (Fossum, 2022; Mæland, 2022).

However, unlike Big Brother LL35 was not a competition; there was no prize at the end, and there was no staging of conflicts (Jerslev, 2014: 3). The profiles lived in the house for the length of their contract but were not confined to the house and could not be voted out. LL35 also offered the opportunity for intermittent real interaction through both the Twitch chat and the connected Discord channel, as well as participation in multi-user games streamed by the profiles. Contrary to Big Brothers parasocial interaction, the two-way communication supported by Twitch and Discord stressed what Chen Lou (2021) describes as a transparasocial relationship between influencers and followers, where the influencer reciprocates in the social interaction with the audience, thus acknowledging the social relationship with the audience (Carter and Hoy, 2024: 131). In their study, Carter and Hoy document how streamers use their awareness of these transparasocial relationships to build their community of followers into a potentially commercial enterprise, as such relationships can be the sources of sponsored promotion outcomes (Carter and Hoy, 2024: 138).

A more immediate comparison can be made between LL35 and the emerging slow TV genre, a comparison also used internal to the production team when talking about the original intention of having a continuous stream from the gaming house (Interview manager, November 8, 2022). The association to slow tv also becomes evident in the streaming of everyday activities such as cooking, baking, eating, and general hanging out. Slow tv was a term first used by NRK for the 100-year anniversary of the Bergen-Oslo railway in 2009, in which the 7-h travel was broadcast in real time, if not live (Puijk and Urdal, 2018). This unlikely concept was an immediate hit, cultivating a type of television based on an interest in human interaction and culture that is almost ethnographic in its focus, rather than narrative. Puijk and Urdal characterize slow tv typically as a live broadcast that provides a sense of immediacy; it has an unbroken timeline that allows spectators to follow the complete event in real time. A slow tv production can be a high-quality production, including multiple cameras with high resolution, often featuring new and creative uses of cameras. Last, a slow tv event typically features a story or event ‘worth communicating’, in the sense that it engages the audience, for example, by tapping into cultural heritage or national identity (Puijk and Urdal, 2018; Urdal, 2017: 23).

NRK’s genre defining broadcasts Bergensbanen minutt for minutt (The Bergen Line minute by minute) and Hurtigruten minutt for minutt (The Norwegian Coastal Express minute by minute), feature continuous broadcasts of iconic journeys through mountains and fjords in Norway and encapsulate a narrative format with a beginning and an end, a direction and a strict procedure. The Hurtigruten show also afforded extensive audience participation. Since this was broadcast live and the schedule was known and widely announced, people would show up in boats, on skerries or at the harbor, to wave, hold up posters, or perform. This potential for viewer interaction with spontaneous self-placement in the television frame and reactions from the television crew, invokes slow TV.

LL35 partly followed the slow tv characteristics identified above. It was a live broadcast with a long-span timeline that allowed the audience to follow along in real time, chatting and gaming with the streamers as they watched. As such it enters the same discussions around the simultaneity and cohesion of liveness associated with traditional broadcast news (Foxman et al., 2024: 517). The timeline was, however, broken for hours each day, to maintain focus on what was interesting to the audience while also securing the personalities’ privacy in a way that reality shows like Big Brother do not. Going beyond established reality shows, LL35 was a high-quality production involving multiple cameras in creative ways, but in addition to the camera controls directed by the production team and the use of automatic tracking, the streamers themselves were allowed to control the cameras. Thus, LL35 took advantage of Twitch’s much wider range of affordances to streamers compared to slow TV or reality TV: control of the camera and microphone, control over the interaction with their viewers, and not least: the ability to directly interact between streamers and viewers (Sjöblom et al., 2017: 23).

Whether LL35 features a story or event that was worth broadcasting is a different debate, central to the criticism of the project, both from within the NRK and outside (Email manager, April 8, 2024). The gaming house had neither the competitive aspect of reality shows, nor the continuous progress of the slow TV examples. The gamers just kept living their lives in the house, occasionally chatting with the audience. With this lack of progress and lack of editorial direction, the program idea threatened to dissolve into glorified young adult boredom facilitated by the Norwegian state broadcasting. The producers originally took very little advantage of the potential of new technology and the options of participation and play.

Watching gamers and other Twitch profiles doing their daily routines and seeing how they include games into this, while responding to their audience, was in line with the experiential and multisensory slow tv (Antunes, 2018), and with NRK’s public service mandate relating to inclusivity and diversity. It allowed for the observation of a cultural phenomenon, while catering to a subculture. As a format, LL35 had ample potential to meet the expectations of public service television. What we may be seeing here is a hybrid form of ethnographic television, focusing on the careful observation of cultural expressions, not the development of a story, but interaction.

At the same time, we found that there was something compelling in LL35’s format; something which appeared to be consistent both with the idea of slow tv and with NRK’s public service mandate. LL35 was criticized for including little gaming and for needing a tighter programming schedule (Fossum, 2022). However, as Taylor observes, the entertainment value of Twitch streaming comes not from the game content that is being streamed, but from fact that the streamers themselves are sharing their personality, their lives, and their lifestyles (Taylor, 2018: 81). The affective labor performed by the personalities as they engage with the audience creates the connection, the sense of being seen and recognized by the personalities as they exaggerate their reactions both to what happens in the room, but also to the games and to the audience (Woodcock and Johnson, 2019: 816).

Studying LL35

LL35 was a work in progress and in constant development and went through different phases of maturation during the first year before finding its form. When the closure of the project was announced in June 2024, there was a series of more traditional videos with game content, far from the original intention. The identification of three phases below is based on the three observation periods June 27–July 1, 2022, October 3–7, 2022, and June 4–8, 14 and 26, 2023.

Phase 1: exploration

During period 1, the profiles residing in the house were TikTok profile Nicklas Tonning and reality tv profile Pierre Louis Olsson. This exploratory phase had little curated programming, focusing mainly on transparasocial relations through casual gameplay, banter with the community on the Twitch chat, and interaction between the residents and the occasional guest. We watched the profiles make dinner while responding to the community’s input on the Twitch chat; a ritual that is much repeated as the scheduled stream starts just before dinner time. While casual game streaming featured, this was given surprisingly little time on the show. Most interesting in terms of programming during the first observation period, was the visit on June 27, 2022 by full-time game streamer Arjeta ‘Ailincia’ Hoxha, who baked a cake live, letting the audience follow the step-by-step unedited preparation process, followed by live-streamed technical problems as Tonning and Hoxha moved to the gaming room for a League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) play session with participants from the Twitch chat. This kind of conversational approach to interaction is typical of Twitch, as it switches between game play and conversations, and the streamers display a flow of affect which keeps viewers engaged and participating (Woodcock and Johnson, 2019: 817).

Phase 2: curated content in focus

During period 2, we observed a clear change in programming strategy for LL35, with more curated content. Olsson had left the house and was replaced by Aslak ‘Klokkismann’ Maurstad, a voice actor and game streamer. Maurstad engaged in a project that translates as ‘Buffing up with buffs’, where he played World of Warcraft (WoW) (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) fourteen hours each day for 2 weeks while also undergoing a physical exercise program with a personal trainer. The audience was invited to follow this planned and monitored project, while also seeing glimpses of a private Maurstad through an introduction to his girlfriend, and through his banter with a friend online. The responsive part of the transparasocial aspect of the stream was particularly present here. Not only would Maurstad respond to the chat, but he would perform live on demand, and the audience could perform actions in chat which would lead to Maurstad performing parts of his exercise program. According to the interviews with the production team, Maurstad was important for this change to more curated content. Through his media experience, he demonstrated the potential of the stream when its content was more deliberately planned, causing the editor to work more closely with the profiles to support this higher level of planning (Interview editor, November 24, 2022).

Phase 3: finding its form

Viewing period 3 took place in June 2023 at a time when LL35 found itself at an impasse in terms of identity and programming. The profiles of the house were Maurstad, YouTuber Jonas ‘Jonieboi’ Johannesen, and Twitch-streamer Veronica ‘Msvosch’ Langø. The programming appeared more mature and integrated in the sense that the difference between curated and continuous was more fluid. There was a focus on the profiles themselves and their personalities. Rather than projects like ‘Buffing up with buffs’, the profiles themselves were highlighted as the content, and it was their individuality, interests, and streaming style that was in focus. An example was how the audience became invited to watch Langø paint and cook while having a fluid conversation with the chat while working, which closely resembles the mode of streaming that made Langø popular on her private channel, and a standard use of Twitch (Sixto-Garciá and Losada-Fernández, 2023: 717). This also reflects a new awareness towards the potential commercial aspect of the transparasocial interaction reflected in the sense that the profiles themselves become products.

Another way of integrating curated and continuous programming was the introduction of challenges in LL35: the profiles gave each other challenges that they must perform on stream. For example, on June 14, Langø challenged Johannesen to create a short film in the genre of satire/humor, featuring random content like pasta, an emotional outburst, and spell ‘Vero’. While this content has little to do with gaming directly, it worked to reinforce the bond with the community and was also accompanied by casual gameplay.

Analysis: a broadcasting perspective on LL35

LL35 as networked broadcasting

The fact that LL35 relies on Twitch as its infrastructure is an important aspect for understanding LL35 both as a standalone concept and as content offered by the public service broadcaster NRK. T.L. Taylor’s term networked broadcasting (2018) is an important concept for connecting streaming and broadcasting. Not to be confused with the traditional large broadcasting networks, Taylor uses the term for video and live televised content distributed online for a large audience. Unlike legacy broadcasting, networked broadcasting operates according to the logics of networked, online media and has the potential to involve two-way communication streamers. Networked broadcasting users follow a social media logic rather than a legacy media logic. Vilde Schanke Sundet (2023: 5) identifies a cultural clash taking place when legacy media must expand into the new platforms to evolve along with the media ecosystem. In her analysis of 4ETG, NRK’s entertainment concept on YouTube, Sundet underlines that the audience on social media platforms is unfaithful and roaming: They will move from channel to channel, and immediately leave if they find that nothing happens (Sundet, 2023: 13). NRK experienced the same issue with LL35 and the integration with Twitch. A study of the behavior of Twitch audiences from 2022 shows that game audiences were focused on the game being played, quickly moving away from apparently popular streamers when they changed to less popular games (Madsen and Olsen, 2022: 46–47), which counters the claim of Alexander Edward Carter and Mariea Grubbs Hoy (2024) that viewers come for the streamer, not the game.

Another interesting aspect of television development is that while broadcasting generally has become asynchronous and available on demand, Twitch has maintained the synchronous, live stream quality of legacy television (Spilker et al., 2020: 606). This demonstrates how network broadcasting and legacy broadcasting are increasingly merging and overlapping, the logic from each adjusting to the technological affordances. By bringing Twitch back into the programming of an established broadcasting network, with LL35 NRK took the infrastructure built by Twitch and created a new hybrid, where the established broadcaster took advantage of the networked broadcasting system. The step into the world of streaming through Twitch appeared as a natural evolution by a broadcaster aware of how technological affordances change user practices.

Does LL35 fulfill the principles of public service broadcasting?

According to Hallvard Moe and Trine Syvertsen, there have been numerous attempts at defining principles of public service broadcasting, but challenges ensue in defining a universal list and applying such principles in practice across different media systems and institutions (2009: 409). Within the public service model, however, four principles have been central: Public ownership and universal availability, freedom from editorial interference, diversity and quality of media output, and cross-political legitimacy (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 71). NRK’s (2023) own statement of commitment, anchored in Norwegian broadcasting legislation and policy, also reflect these basic principles. It focuses on the overarching purpose of NRK ‘to meet democratic, social and cultural needs in society’ (article 12), relating to the protection of free speech and with the editorial independence of NRK (article 13). We can break down the commitments into the following principles relevant for understanding the role of LL35 within NRK’s public service mandate:

Universal availability

Within the Nordic model, universal and egalitarian access to public service broadcasting is seen as a public good (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 73). A central pillar in the NRK statement of commitment is universal availability. The statement specifies that their broadcasts need to be available for the entire population, free of payment. The statement further stresses attention towards a disabled audience and includes geographical and language dimensions (NRK, 2023).

As the LL35 live stream is available on Twitch, both in its native software application and through a browser, it is only restricted by accessibility to the Internet. The selected programmed scheduling hours are also made available on NRK.no and on YouTube. However, there are technological demands. To gain the full experience it is necessary to have both Twitch and Discord open and available, and preferably also access to the games being played. This puts a strain on the user’s equipment and economy and requires a certain level of technological literacy. Although technical instructions were given to onboard the audience into participating in the Twitch channel, specific games, and the Discord channel, it was accompanied with rather sparse information which favored the already experienced Twitch user. This illustrates a paradox: While there is no restriction in availability for a narrow part of the target group – young males with game access, technological access and literacy, access is much more limited for those who either fall outside of the target group, or lack the right, often expensive, equipment or literacy. This indicates that although viewing was close to universally available, participation was limited by expectations of technical skills (Email manager, April 8, 2024).

Diversity

Within public service broadcasting, diversity is an important principle both in terms of the output offered and in terms of representation (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 81, 82). This is reflected in NRK’s mandate, which states that NRK must contribute to regional and national media diversity, reflect the cultural diversity in the population, their artistic variation and the geographical diversity. A particular attention towards children also shows that age is a factor (NRK, 2023). In other words, the commitment to diversity implies that NRK cannot just target a large mainstream audience in the way a commercial institution would but should also cover niche platforms and online activities (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 86–89). In the context of LL35, this question concerns not only demographic diversity but also to what degree the show is able to engage the game-playing subculture.

In the context of NRK programming, the LL35 project was a signpost for NRK’s efforts towards providing diverse content able to reach elusive demographics, such as LL35’s main target group – young men (interviews on Nov 8 and Nov 24, 2022). While the gaming audience has become more diversified, there is still a gender gap and in Norway numbers show that 85% of the boys aged 17–18 play videogames compared to 44% of the girls (Medietilsynet, 2022: 7). For this reason, NRK offering game-oriented content on platforms regularly used for gaming appears as a sound strategy.

Sarita Malik (2013) discusses diversity in public service television and highlights the importance of cultural diversity, which depends on supply and digital strategies (2013: 230). By streaming live from LL35, NRK offers insight into several aspects of gaming culture. The coverage of game culture by the PSB may also provide a sense of legitimization of gaming as subculture and hobby, due to the status of NRK as the authority of information and entertainment in Norway (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 82).

However, if we consider LL35’s ability to reach out to a diverse audience, we find that the show falls short. While there is a relative balanced mix between the genders if we count profiles and guests, ethnic diversity is limited. During our viewing period, only one of the profiles featuring LL35 appears, based on their name, to have minority background.

According to the production team, NRK frequently uses young hosts for their youth programming, but the editor made it clear that it is vital that the LL35 profiles have independent control of the programming and can work unsupervised – something that comes with experience and maturity (interview Nov 24, 2022). This caused the kind of compromise the group of profiles developed into over the year, leading to somewhat older but more independent streamers with more content control. This created a dilemma: To appear as friends with their target audiences and develop a transparasocial relationship of experienced friendship, the profiles should have been at the same age of also the youngest audience, but to meet the demands of NRK and their editorial responsibility, they needed to be older.

Representation

The ability to be the ‘voice of the nation’ and thus represent linguistic, cultural, and regional diversity is central to public service broadcasting (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 82). NRK’s commitment to representation stresses that ‘NRK should disseminate knowledge about different groups and diversity in Norwegian society. NRK should create arenas for debate and information about Norway as a multi-cultural society’ (NRK, 2023).

Within media representation, we may distinguish between textual representation and audience representation (Malik, 2014; Nærland and Dahl, 2022). Textual representation concerns the meanings associated by the content; in other words, whether the content presents a specific culture in an authentic and faithful manner, while audience representation concerns how the audiences evaluate the content and the ability of a show to represent the target group or audience in question. NRK’s commitments to diversity also indicate a commitment to representation. Audience representation is present in the attention towards presenting the diverse culture of the population and particular attention towards minorities, and content representation is encompassed in the requirement to ‘disseminate content from the Nordic region and promote knowledge of Nordic social conditions, culture and languages’ (NRK, 2023).

So was LL35 able to represent gamers and gaming culture? As personalities and visitors were streamers and other media profiles focusing on Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok, there is little doubt that LL35 was a representative of a form of contemporary online culture popular among the target group. Except for Maurstad who was 30 years old during the broadcast, the LL35 profiles and visitors were between 20–25, and a reasonable match to the upper end of the target group. When it comes to gender representation, there was a fair balance counting guests and profiles together, a fact that is indicative of NRK’s wish to foster an inclusive environment also for women (interview Nov 24, 2022) even if it may not mirror the gender composition of gamer culture. The inclusion of high profiled women streamers may however have an inspirational quality as well as challenging gamer stereotypes. By following the gaming house profiles over time, we learned that they were far from the stereotypical socially inept gamer (Kowert et al., 2014), but instead ordinary people who integrate their gaming hobby into a range of other practices of daily life. The value of legitimization cannot be overstated as a way of including subcultural groups and people who experience themselves as outsiders into the mainstream culture.

The normalization of game culture that comes with NRK’s coverage of the subculture may reduce the social stigma around gamers as socially awkward, aggressive or introvert. The representation of game culture in mainstream culture should also be seen in context with what Syvertsen et al. call an adaptive approach to enlightenment (2014: 80). One enlightening aspect of the LL35 stream is how thoroughly it busted the myth that all game related content must be accompanied by aggression and verbal attacks on the participants. By facilitating a channel where the gamer audience members were able to respond and participate it offered the target group a channel to demonstrate supportive, friendly playfulness, in the face of an often-negative image.

Balance between enlightenment and entertainment

Important for the public service broadcasting ideal is an adaptive approach to enlightenment; in other words, securing enlightened citizens through mixed genres is a general strategy (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 82). One of the overarching principles in NRK’s statement of commitments concerns enlightenment, stressing that ‘NRK should promote public debate and play its part in ensuring that the entire population receives sufficient information to enable it to actively participate in democratic processes’ (NRK 2023). This emphasis on debate potentially merges well with Twitch content. Mark R. Johnson calls Twitch an agora for gamer culture, a framework for discourse (2024b: 112). The fact that LL35 served the purpose of a virtual meeting place where game enthusiasts could meet for discussion should not be underestimated even if communication were more directed towards community building than towards political deliberation (Glas et al., 2019).

Elsewhere the bylaws focus on NRK’s requirement to contribute knowledge about education and learning, as well as international affairs. At the same time, the bylaws show attention towards the fact that NRK is in a competitive marketplace and for this reason also must consider certain commercial activities. It is in this light that we must read NRK’s statement that their services should include attractive programming which also includes entertainment. However, as Sundet argues, popular enlightenment is not what characterizes NRK’s youth programming, typically located within the entertainment division of the broadcaster (Sundet, 2023). Entertainment, an important PSB practice, is understood to engage, empower, and unify the audience and facilitate public connection (Nærland and Dahl, 2022; Sundet, 2023).

While LL35 does not have an educational goal, there is little doubt that it enlightens the public about gaming culture and demystifies it. The coverage of gaming culture may also be inspirational and possibly demonstrate alternative pathways to careers. When watching streams of play, it is possible to learn from players’ tactics. Through the profiles’ activities and general interaction with the audience, there were also moments of alternative educational glimpses; for example, Langø’s baking session provided insight into the process of baking; arguably valuable information for the target group. Maurstad’s sessions with a training coach were likewise instructional.

The question of whether the show was able to entertain is equally elusive. The show was at the beginning criticized for downplaying gameplay (Fossum, 2022; Mæland, 2022); the form of content that arguably has the highest entertainment value for the target group. Also, building on a slow tv format, which is not known to have a high appeal among young people (Puijk, 2023: 16), does not increase LL35’s entertainment value. However, the show had a steady community and audience and while the producers acknowledged that audience numbers on legacy media do not translate to streaming services and social media, NRK measured the number of hours watched by the target group in the autumn of 2022 and evaluated it as a success (interview Nov 8, 2022). The numbers later fell and did not recover.

The question is not whether LL35 was able to entertain and enlighten in isolation, but how it was able to integrate these into an engaging experience. We found that it was through transparasocial interaction that LL35 was able to unify the two. We have already mentioned before the ability of the show to create a sensation of familiarization and getting-to-know the profiles. With the chat function and the ability to have a conversation between profiles, guests, producers, and the community, the audience got authentic real-time information about gaming culture and the interactions forms within it in an engaging and entertaining way. Further, following Sjöblom and colleagues (Sjöblom et al., 2017; Sjöblom and Hamari, 2017), the casual stream of LL35 also caters towards social integrative and tension release needs.

Participation

Related to the above is public service broadcasting’s responsibility to enable citizens to participate in the public sphere (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 81). This is covered in NRK’s statement of commitments, stating it should enable the participation in civil society (Nærland and Dahl, 2022). Indeed, the NRK bylaws specify that their Internet service should include ‘games that stimulate interactive participation’ (NRK, 2023). LL35 was able to deliver on this principle, and its approach to participation was the main innovative aspect of the program. Unlike the fan participation with commenting, gossiping and voting that fuel reality shows, and the direct participation exemplified by people showing up in unlikely places for the travel-based slow TV, LL35 needed people to actually join, not only as invited guests in the house, but as players in gameplay. Gaming is ideal for distributed participation, and this is where LL35 differed from esports viewing. By picking gamer personalities to live and play in this house, their play sessions became joint events for the entire viewership.

This is also where Twitch’s ability to invite the community to participate through chat opened for unique participation opportunities. This facilitates a substantial expansion of the parasocial interaction seen in legacy media as it allows for direct, live conversation between the on-screen profiles and the audience (Carter and Hoy, 2024; Taylor, 2018). In all observation periods we saw how the stream transcended the parasocial engagement of legacy media and entered transparasocial relationships as the personalities addressed the audience in the chat. They invited viewers to engage in co-creation of content, for example, by asking questions and suggesting topics for discussion. Maurstad invited the audience to use stream specific, free Twitch points to buy actions from him, such as drinking water or working out – thereby also utilizing the commercially oriented aspects of the service. Langø asked viewers directly for advice about what dishes she should cook. With both personalities, it was not the performance itself, but the contact with the viewers that created a connection, a genuine and affective response to the efforts of their audience.

Being able to participate through transparasocial interaction should not be underestimated. This was enhanced by the slow tv characteristics that allowed the audience to follow the profiles over time as they casually engaged with the audience as well as with the in-house activities. During COVID-19 Twitch viewership expanded, possibly due to the transparasocial nature of the relationships between streamers and audience (Carter and Hoy, 2024: 127). For people living alone – and due to the long distances, a lot of young people in Norway live alone – this is a way to feel that there are other people around, and this kind of relationships can work to soften the feeling of isolation and loneliness, thus supporting the ability to engage and foster public connection.

Discussion: NRK, meet internet culture

The Internet is not only the home of wholesome participatory play; it is also the stalking ground of anti-social elements who thrive on silencing others. As Johnson underlines in his recent book Twitch, streamers share more of themselves than others, and are more vulnerable than participants in other gaming or online contexts (Johnson, 2024b: 39). Not all the LL35 profiles could be expected to be immune to Internet hate, and there are many reasons why it could be expected that either trolls or haters attack the Twitch or Discord stream (Mihailova, 2022; Uttarapong et al., 2021). Was NRK prepared?

A problematic practice NRK adopted from social media for LL35 was the use of volunteer moderators. This is an example of NRK’s understanding how important actual audience participation and interaction is within the network logic. An important part of networked content is created by the participation of audiences; through chats, chat moderation and occasionally also through play (Hamilton et al., 2014). Online communities function mainly due to a gift economy, where free labor is exchanged for experience, status or previous or future assistance in other projects. Fan communities come into existence because fans want them, and they are maintained, fleshed out and kept alive by the work done by unpaid enthusiasts. Julian Kücklich (2005) termed this playbour, combining play and labor, referencing its strong connection to game culture, while Axel Bruns (2006) combines the user and producer into produser, terming the practice produsage. Both terms underline how large economies have been built on the volunteer content and community building delivered by unpaid work, as we can see in the online empires of Facebook, Google and X (Twitter). The flip side of playbour is how it produces something of value for capitalists of gaming and online platforms, and is exploitable (Ersi, 2023).

Considering what we know about the problems in moderation culture (Criddle, 2021; Stackpole, 2022) moderation practice is a topic that needs to be watched and revisited in the development of public service broadcasting within a social media logic. The emotional labor caused by harassment is well known also in legacy media (Miller and Lewis, 2022). Also, NRKs collaboration with Twitch was questionable. Streaming LL35 on Twitch meant that NRK started utilizing the chat system connected to Twitch. This meant giving over a part of the control of the content to another provider, both for distribution and for storage and moderation. Most streamers, particularly the professionals, use moderators to control their chat. NRK did this, using, very radically for a professional broadcaster, volunteer chat moderators for Twitch and Discord. This is very much in the spirit of volunteer-based game streams.

This practice is not unproblematic when employed by a large, state-owned company. The lack of awareness of the potential problems with volunteer use in what can be a very fraught situation could have caused real harm to the volunteer moderators, and the fact that nothing happened is not an excuse. These unpaid workers were not protected by work regulations, or had access to benefits following labor laws, meaning that in cases of conflict, attacks and harassment, they were potentially vulnerable (Riedl et al., 2020). With a volunteer and dispersed moderator team, this could get tricky to monitor, follow up and support. This became a focus in our questions to the two interviewees about this volunteer moderation practice, as we wanted to know if NRK had a plan in place for the kind of potential hostile engagement we were braced to see. This was not considered a problem. At the time of the interviews there had been a few examples of unpleasant attention and trolling, but they were not experienced as problematic for anyone involved. There was a paid community coordinator, who monitored the chats and the other moderators, and they were prepared to pull in experts to support the participants against trauma from exposure. This support was mainly directed at the streamers, not the moderators. At the same time the absence of malicious trolling on this stream was interesting. It may be a result of the authority of NRK, or the natural boundaries caused by the stream being in Norwegian. This was in itself very interesting in a project that aimed at bringing the frequently contentious gamer culture into the establishment.

A connected issue that further problematizes the relation between public and commercial actors in LL35 is the implicit commercial aspects of transparasocial interaction identified by Carter and Hoy (2024). First, the blurring of commercial interests and what is experienced as intimate social relationships is doubtlessly taking a new step with influencers and person-centric digital genres. More directly relevant for this case, the fact that Twitch is a commercial service with mechanisms for streamers to earn an income is potentially in conflict with the NRK’s economic model, which is based on public support and licensing. For LL35, NRK’s collaboration with Twitch had been approved by NRK’s legal team and all forms of transfer of money between profiles and the audience had been turned off (interview, manager, Nov 8, 2022). Still, this demonstrates the complex and intertwined relationship between commercial and non-commercial actors within the modern digital media landscape.

Conclusion

NRK announced summer 2024 that they were shutting down the LL35 project (Rodem, 2024). While LL35 may at the end of the project have appeared without a clear direction, under-curated, and of little relevance even to the target group of young game enthusiasts, it is easy to understand that such issues follow the experimentation with new formats. NRK’s previous attempts with games have included game journalism, game reviews, and streaming esports tournaments, and they have also attempted to integrate browser-based games (Moe, 2009), but no broadcaster has successfully been able to integrate games as played into their services. While Spanish streamers on Twitch have adopted and integrated legacy broadcasters’ structures and formats (Gamir-Ríos et al., 2024), going the other direction and integrating online based networked broadcasting characteristics into legacy broadcasting is uncommon and, as we see, complex. Reflecting Bogost’s argument of procedural rhetorics – the idea that games create arguments through how their rules represent systems and processes (2007), Moe argues that gameplay may be able to communicate certain messages in a different, complementary way to traditional non-interactive media using humor and involving players in a different way that potentially may help them confront their own prejudices (2009: 268). Johnson poses humor as one of the vital features of Twitch streams, even when it is filled with in-jokes (2024a). With LL35, NRK heavily piggybacked on the conventions and formats from the gaming community itself; using streaming which involved the audience through chats and play. What remains, however, is to figure out how this works in a public service context. So rather than asking whether it should be the role of a PSB to cover ‘Big Brother of gaming’ (Svelstad and Eliassen, 2022), we must accept this as an exploratory project in line with the adaptation and experimentation that is part of a PSB’s responsibility. With LL35, NRK explored Twitch as a new platform for PBS content, and as such it is not unreasonable to claim that the project was an attempt to truly bring together legacy television and networked television. Networked broadcasting has been developing since 1996, when 19-year-old Jennifer Kaye Ringley purchased a web-cam and started streaming her life at JenniCam (see White, 2003: 14–15). The almost 30 years since have seen a dramatic development in technology, format, and cultural integration and understanding of this style of programming. The same technology is available for legacy television, but it has been adopted slowly, only with great difficulty shifting the formats of the monoliths which are national television stations.

Despite LL35 being shut down after 2 years, it revealed great potential as well as weaknesses. It demonstrated how live events have moved away from legacy television and over to streaming service, how the idea of public discourse has shifted to a much more rapid and direct format as the public is used to social media, and how important real-time conversations and interactions are for online community building. These aspects are still not a planned and ubiquitous part of even a PSB with as strong an emphasis in public discourse as NRK. While LL35 was a radical project, what PSBs can potentially learn from this stark example of how little experience legacy media have with social media logic, should be part of every discussion around the role of media in the public discourse.