SVT Europa

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SVT Europa
Launched	1988/1997
Owned by	Sveriges Television
Country	Sweden
Formerly called	TV4, SVT4
Website	http://svt.se/europa
Availability
Satellite
Sirius 2
Thaicom 5

SVT Europa 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 and terresitrally in parts of southern Finland.

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 on renamed "SVT4". On December 10, 1997 the channel started broadcasting from the Sirius 2 satellite to all of Europe and was renamed "SVT Europa". In the beginning, only regular household and hotels in the Nordic countries were allowed to receive the channel. 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 an thereby became available in parts of Africa, Australia and Asia. The Thaicom broadcasts do however require a large satellite dish of about 2-3 metres.

The broadcasts are mostly made up of the Swedish language programmes from SVT1 and SVT2. If both SVT1 and SVT2 show a programme which SVT doesn't have worldwide rights for, programmes from SVT24 or Kunskapskanalen are shown. When SVT1 and SVT2 aren't broadcasting at all, SVT24 is shown. Teletext pages from SVT Text are included in the broadcasts. The radio channels Radio Sweden and SR P4 are also included with SVT Europa.