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Around 300,000 spectators braved the winter cold and headed to central Copenhagen on Sunday as Denmark got a new king.
1 / 2Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix/TT
300,000 Danes were present at Christiansborg Castle to witness when Crown Prince Frederik was proclaimed the new regent on Sunday. But it wasn’t just on the streets that the Danes followed the historic event.
According to the analysis company Nielsen, another three million followed the change of throne at home on the TV sofas. The roughly ten hour long broadcasts on the two major TV channels DR1 and TV2 were seen by 3,104,000 TV viewers, more than half of the around 5.9 million Danes. On DR, the coverage reached a total of 2.3 million viewers, while TV2 had just over 1.8 million at most.
28 percent of Danes over the age of 12 also listened to at least one of DR’s radio broadcasts about the change of throne. That corresponds to 1.4 million Danes.
Figures from the mobile company 3 confirm that interest in the change of throne was great. When the king was to be proclaimed, data traffic was 300 percent higher than at the same time the Sunday before. Almost no calls were made during the king’s speech to the people, after which the number increased again.
It was in her New Year’s speech that Queen Margrethe surprisingly announced that she would abdicate and hand over to her son Frederik. The New Year’s talk was seen by a total of just over two million, according to figures from Nielsen.
On New Year’s Eve, searches for Queen Margrethe also increased by 8,500 percent compared to an average December day in 2023. According to Google Denmark, it is one of the largest individual searches in Denmark ever.