Local noir and local identity: Norskov and the spatial implications of branded content

Based on a production study of the recent television crime drama Norskov (2015-17), this chapter argues that there is a three-way relationship between new ways of co-financing television drama production in Denmark, local political and business interests in urban regeneration and a rising interest in branded content from the Danish commercial public service broadcaster TV 2. Firstly, we describe how advertiser funded programming and local television funding have affected the screening of place and how this is interrelated with a newly established glocal logic in financing television drama. Secondly, we analyse in what way local collaboration in producing television has been a cornerstone in strategic city branding and how especially the local port has been a motif in urban regeneration. Lastly, we address how branded content can have a spatial impact on the consolidation of a local identity for a peripheral area, i.e. how there is a special relationship between place branding, local co-financing and co-creating a new metanarrative for a local community. Based on our Norskov research we seek to answer the question cui bono with regard to the possible outcomes.