Choir's 80th anniversary also marks 30th year of broadcasts in Denmark

When the Mormon Tabernacle Choir celebrates its 80th year of broadcasting "Music and The Spoken Word" throughout the United States on July 15, it will also mark another milestone — 30 years of uninterrupted weekly broadcasts to Denmark.

In 1974, a group of music interested people founded the nonprofit Danish Tabernacle Choir Society in Support of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, with the object of diffusing knowledge of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and its music.

The society is not affiliated with the LDS Church, and its members consists of both LDS and non-LDS fans of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

It was the society that introduced the European public to the recordings of the choir.

In cooperation with Iain McKay, director of international marketing at Bonneville Communications in Salt Lake City, the Danish Tabernacle Choir Society opened for "Music and The Spoken Word" to be broadcast on Danish radio in 1979 and later also on Danish television — a few years before the choir went on its second grand tour of Scandinavia.

The radio broadcasts of "Music and The Spoken Word" in Denmark have numbered up to 45 stations covering a substantial area of Denmark.