They're also the only national broadcaster I know of that devotes time to classical chess matches which typically last 4+ hours with one piece being moved ever few minutes. It helps that the world champion and best chess player is Norwegian, but slow TV may have made them more receptive.
And people love it. Last year at Boxing Day, 300 000-500 000 viewers in average, close to a million viewers overall [1] - that's ~20% of the population. And the popularity has been high for at least five years now, as it has started to become more of a tradition
