In this project, I explore the Danish public service channel Danmarks Radio (DR) and its children division Ramasjang in regard to how children’s television can be used as a cultural learning and formation tool. The Danish public service channel DR is bound by the public-service contract that dictates guidelines that Ramasjang’s children’s content has to follow to make so children have safe content to watch without the influence of advertisers as DR is funded by the Danish tax-system. I analyse two popular children’s shows separated by decades to see how the content for children has changed over the years regarding learning and formation. The two cases are Bamses billedbog by Katrine Hauch-Fausbøll in 1983 and the Onkel Reje collection of shows that spans from 2012 to 2021 made by Mads Geertsen who also stars as the title character. Lastly I analyse Ramasjang-apps for smart devices to discover how DR can achieve more situations for learning with transmedia storytelling and communication between the different media and how interest in the characters engage children to try the app-games and therefore engage with the same ‘univers’ in another media with different affordances. In order to do this analysis of how Danish children’s television can be used as a learning tool I will apply theory of learning by Knud Illeris that will show what learning is and how you learn. But in order to form a bridge between general learning and learning with audio-visual media I also apply theory of ‘mediepædagogik’ that will show how children can learn with audiovisual media. Lastly, I apply cross-media theory to show how the Ramasjang characters can engage children regardless of which media platforms they appear on.
Furthermore, my analysis will show that both cases can learn viewers by showing general situations that any viewer might encounter in their everyday life, like children disagreeing and becoming enemies before pathing the rift between them and becoming friends once again as shown in Bamses billedbog or how to behave among others in both cases. The analysis will similarly demonstrate how the differences in how the content of the shows are mediated and evolve from the observing theatre style in Bamses billedbog to the more contemporary filmstyle of Onkel Reje. Just as the mediation style has changed so has the contents from the innocent plays of Bamses billedbog to the gamified adventures of Onkel Reje. Ramasjang’s cross-media communication between traditional flow-tv and digital apps teaches through video games that require the player to hone their skills like memory and eye-hand coordination to be able move on to the next stage or to win the game. These competitive elements serve as a big motivator for the player to keep them playing and train their skills. Finally, this paper will end with a discussion on how effective DR’s potential reach is with regards to how many children the Danish public-service channel is able to get to watch or interact with Ramasjang’s contents.