Reaching Young Audiences Through Research: Using the NABC Method to Create the Norwegian Web Teenage Drama SKAM/Shame

Co-creating content with children to avoid ‘Uncle Swag’: Strategies for producing public service television drama for tweens and teens at the Danish children’s channel DR Ultra

“…All of this has gone rather unnoticed until the success of the hit youth series SKAM (2015-2017) made scholars focus more on fiction for young audiences (e.g. Bengtsson et al, 2018;Redvall, 2018;Sundet, 2017Sundet, , 2019 and Scandinavian broadcasters became more confident that one can produce content for this audience with national as well as international potential. As emphasised in the research on SKAM, the somewhat surprising success of the series did not come out of nowhere (Sundet, 2017).…”

“…In the 2010s, Scandinavian public service broadcasters like NRK and DR still put greater emphasis on trying to test ideas before their implementation by working with particular models and methods for idea development and assessment. NRK has used the so-called NABC method for several years when developing drama for children and young viewers as well as in other departments (Redvall 2018;Sundet, 2017Sundet, , 2019. NABC is an abbreviation for Need, Approach, Benefits and Competition which make up the elements of a systematic approach for exploring the intended audience for a new product or service developed by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).…”

Youthification of television through online media: Production strategies and narrative choices in DRUCK/SKAM Germany

“…Online media play an important role in research, as our interviews demonstrate. Whereas for SKAM the story's narrative was developed out of extensive interviews with teenagers (Redvall, 2018), DRUCK used research to change and adjust single aspects of the Norwegian original (Beck, personal communication, 2018). This changed a bit in the fifth and sixth season of DRUCK, when the main narrative was no longer based directly on SKAM and focused instead on a new generation of characters.…”

“…Both digital and analogue casting aimed not only to find amateur actors who resemble their characters, but also to communicate with young people about their lives. This strategy for developing teen TV took cues from the extensive, almost ethnographic interview research that was done for SKAM (Sundet, 2020: 73-76;Redvall, 2018), but was adjusted to suit the production conditions of the project network and especially its tighter budget. While SKAM's research and casting took place in-house, with permanently employed researchers, DRUCK relied on an external production company.…”

Cross-media, co-creative and current: New strategies for educating talent for Danish children’s film and television in the 2020s

“…Having knowledge of this is thus a great advantage in terms of creating, distributing and positioning new content for them. In the Scandinavian context, this was successfully proven by Julie Andem's web series SKAM (NRK, 2015-17), which based its characters and storylines, as well as its publishing strategy and use of music, on extensive research into the lives, dreams and concerns of 16-year-old Norwegian girls (Redvall, 2018). SKAM in many ways indicated a paradigm shift in the Scandinavian film and television industries by showing that national/ Scandinavian content could be highly popular with young domestic audiences, and could even manage to cross borders.…”