Sveriges Television

Sveriges Television AB (SVT, Swedish: [ˈsværjɛs tɛlɛvɪˈɧuːn]), Sweden's Television, is the Swedish national public TV broadcaster, funded by a television licence fee payable by all owners of television sets, and set by the Riksdag. The Swedish public broadcasting system is largely modeled after the system used in the United Kingdom, and Sveriges Television shares many traits with its British counterpart, the BBC.

SVT is a public limited company that can be described as a quasi-autonomous non-government organisation. Together with the other two public broadcasters, Sveriges Radio and Sveriges Utbildningsradio, it is owned by an independent foundation, Förvaltningsstiftelsen för Sveriges Radio AB, Sveriges Television AB och Sveriges Utbildningsradio AB, The foundation's board consists of 13 politicians, representing the political parties in the Riksdag and appointed by the Government. The foundation in turn appoints the members of the SVT board. SVTs regulatory framework is governed by Swedish law. Originally, SVT and Sveriges Radio were a joint company, but since 1979 they and Sveriges Utbildningsradio are sister companies sharing some joint services.

SVT1

SVT1 (SVT Ett) is the primary television station of the Swedish public service broadcaster Sveriges Television in Sweden.

History

Television in Sweden officially launched on 4 September 1956 with the launch of Radiotjänst TV, which was renamed Sveriges Radio TV a year later. The arrival of a second television network, TV2, led to the first channel relaunching as TV1 in 1969, while remaining under the Sveriges Radio banner. Full time colour broadcasting in 1970 before both networks were placed under the management of Sveriges Television (SVT) on 1 July 1979.

To encourage competition between the two channels, TV1 relaunched as Kanal 1 in July 1987 with the entirety of its homegrown programming produced in Stockholm, including the national news and current affairs programme Aktuellt (Current). Increased competition from commercial channels, including TV4, led to another relaunch as SVT1 in 1996, incorporating programming produced from across the country.

A major corporate revamp in 2001 saw the channel repositioned as SVT's flagship network in an effort to make it the most watched television station in Sweden - a position previously held by SVT2. As part of the revamp, TV2's popular news programme Rapport (Report) moved to the first network while Aktuellt moved to the second network.

SVT World

SVT World is an international television channel from the Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Television. The channel is available on satellite in Europe and much of Africa, Australia and Asia, terrestrially in parts of Finland and worldwide via IPTV.

The channel launched in 1988 as TV4 broadcasting a mix of SVT1 and SVT2 terrestrially to the Swedish-speaking areas of southern Finland. The channel was later renamed SVT4. On December 10, 1997 the channel started broadcasting from the Sirius 2 satellite to all of Europe and was renamed SVT Europa. Initially, only regular households and hotels in the Nordic countries were allowed to receive the channel, but in 1999, cable networks in Spain were allowed to distribute the channel and in 2000 hotels outside the Nordic countries were allowed to include the channel.

In 2005, SVT Europa started broadcasting on the Thaicom 5 satellite and thereby became available in parts of Africa, Asia, and Australia, although this require a large satellite dish of about 2–3 metres. SVT Europa no longer broadcasts from the Sirius 2 satellite, it is now available via the satellite Eurobird 9.