The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

: Norsk rikskringkasting AS

Aksjeselskap

Aksjeselskap is the Norwegian term for a stock-based company. It is usually abbreviated AS or A/S, especially when used in company names. An AS is always a limited company, i.e. the owners cannot be held liable for any debt beyond the stock capital...

), which is usually known as NRK, is the Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 government-owned radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 public broadcasting company, and the largest media

Mass media

Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

 organisation in Norway. It is a founding member of the European Broadcasting Union

European Broadcasting Union

The European Broadcasting Union is a confederation of 74 broadcasting organisations from 56 countries, and 49 associate broadcasters from a further 25...

.
It is primarily financed through a combination of a mandatory annual license fee

Television licence

A television licence is an official licence required in many countries for the reception of television broadcasts...

 for each person who is in possession of a TV (94 per cent), and a number of commercial activities such as programme and DVD sales, spin-off products and certain types of sponsorship.
Regular radio broadcasts started in Norway in 1925 by the privately owned company Kringkastningselskapet, the predecessor to NRK which was founded in 1933.