Showcasing reality content on the front page: Comparing four services on the Danish video streaming market

Abstract

This article is based on a three-year-long content analysis of the use of reality TV content on the front pages of four popular video streaming services in Denmark: DRTV, TV 2 Play, Viaplay, and Netflix. The results give rare insights into front pages that are normally hidden behind logins but also longitudinal perspectives about the services’ changing curation practices. In particular, the two institutions with public-service obligations, DR and TV 2, have VOD services that showcase reality content more prominently than the two commercial competitors in this study. These findings point to how the reality genre’s role has changed over the years, since DR and TV 2 now embrace reality content in a strategy to offer ‘Danish content’ that stands out from what their foreign competitors offer.