Sweden

Sweden, the largest TV market in Scandinavia, is dominated by public channels SVT1, SVT2 and the commercial TV4. Sveriges Television’s (SVT) public-service channels are financed by the licence fee as to 83%. In recent years, the commercial channel TV4, which was launched in 1990, became market leader for audience share and advertising revenues.

Swedish private broadcaster Kinnevik, an industry conglomerate with its main interests in forest industry and telecommunication, is the largest private owner in the broadcast business in the Nordic countries with its TV3 channels targeted at the audience in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Recently, Kinnevik has taken its channels off the Astra satellite system in order to concentrate all its programming on rival Nordic satellite platforms. The three TV3 versions in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian and the film channel TV1000 are now transmitted from the Intelsat and Sirius satellites. However, Nordic pay-TV rival NetHold claims to remain firmly committed to Astra in order to launch its digital package from there in September.

Having struggled for Scandinavia’s cable and satellite market for years, Kinnevik and NetHold are now supposed to be in advanced merger talks to create a joint venture in the Nordic market. A merged group would be expected to launch an extensive bouquet of digital channels, including a near-video-on-demand service, with a monopoly-like dominance on the pay-TV rights for Hollywood films and the top sports events.

According to the State study "From mass media to multimedia - to digitise Swedish television", the Parliament should take further action to introduce digital terrestrial television in Sweden by 1997. For the first two years, there will be room for five new channels besides SVT1, SVT2 and TV4. Once a terrestrial network is established within this first stage, it is expected to offer a total of 24 channels. By 2010, Sweden plans to have about 50 digital channels whose programmes will include the possibility of interactive television. However, Swedish cable operators oppose these plans since they fear that their networks could get worthless.

© July 1996 by Jens Barkemeyer