TV4 (Sweden)

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TV4

Launched	September 15, 1990
Owned by	TV4 AB
Audience share	24.5% (Nov '06, MMS)
Country	Sweden
Broadcast area	Sweden
Headquarters	Stockholm
Website	http://www.tv4.se/
Availability
Terrestrial
Analogue in Sweden	Until 2007
Boxer TV Access	Channel 4
Satellite
Viasat	Yes
Canal Digital	Channel 4
Cable
Com Hem	Channel 4 (digital)

TV4 is the largest commercial television channel in Sweden. It started broadcasting by satellite in 1990 and, since 1992, on the terrestrial network. In 1994, TV4 became the largest channel and remained so for a number of years. The two channels of Sveriges Television (SVT) lost more and more viewers for a couple of years. In 2001, SVT made big schedule changes. After making schedule changes in 2001, SVT1 had practically the same numbers of viewers as TV4. SVT1 and TV4 in Sweden correspond in many ways to BBC One and ITV in the United Kingdom^{[citation needed]} or ARD and RTL in Germany^{[citation needed]}. Since 2004 TV4 is a full active member of the European Broadcasting Union.

1 History
2 Programming
3 Jurisdiction
4 External links

[edit] History

TV4 was launched on September 15, 1990. The channel invested in an extensive news organisation and Swedish drama series. The premiere suffered from technical faults and the drama series weren't popular with critics.

In 1991, two of the channels oldest entertainment programmes premiered: the Swedish version of Jeopardy! and the Saturday night bingo show Bingolotto. Bingolotto in particular became highly popular. This year also saw TV4 awarded a license to broadcast terrestrially.

Terrestrial broadcasts started on March 2, 1992. During this year, Nyhetsmorgon started and marked the introduction of weekday breakfast television in Sweden.

In 1994, TV4 shown the cult aussie prison drama Prisoner Cell Block H witch was called "Kvinnofangelset" and soon won a fan base of its own just like the United Kingdom did and the show has been a huge hit and has been shown twice in a row of 692 episodes. sadly TV4 have no plans to repeat the series again after the show finished in 2004.

In 2003 after the cult huge hit that Prisoner Cell Block H made TV4 brought a new UK prison drama called Bad Girls but after it failed with the viewers the show was axed after 2 series and TV4 intend to never repeat the show again.

During the 1990s TV4 would broadcast several popular Friday night entertainment shows such as Fångarna på fortet (Swedish version of Fort Boyard), Kär och galen, Tur i kärlek, På rymmen, Sikta mot stjärnorna (Sound-mix Show), Stadskampen (Intervilles) and Småstjärnorna (Mini Playback Show).

They also broadcasted several home-grown sitcoms such as Rena Rama Rolf and En fyra för tre as well as the popular soap opera Tre kronor.

In the early 1990s, TV4 decided to move their 7 o'clock news to 7.30 in order to compete with the most popular news programme, Rapport, which, at that time, was broadcast on SVT2. This failed and the news was subsequently moved to 6.30. In 2004, the evening news was moved to 7 o'clock, and the status quo reinstated.

TV4 technically lost its monopoly on commercial terrestrial broadcasting with the launch of digital terrestrial television in 1999. On September 19, 2005, the first analogue terrestrial TV4 transmitters were shut down on the island of Gotland. The last analogue transmitters are due to be shut down in October 2007. The analogue satellite signal was shut down in 2004.

[edit] Programming

Ident, used since 2004.

TV4 offers a mix of news, sports, drama series, soaps, entertainment, current affairs programmes, sitcoms, feature films, soaps, documentaries and phone-in shows.

News is an important part of TV4. It broadcasts the news program Nyheterna, literally the News at 7 and 10 o'clock and Nyhetsmorgon (News Morning) in the mornings. Since 2005, it also screens two news updates during the day.

Friday nights have included family entertainment at 8 since the early 1990s.

Bingolotto occupied Saturday evenings from 1991 to 2004. Then, TV4 moved Bingolotto to Sundays and started broadcasting feature films instead. With the start of Deal or No Deal in 2006, family entertainment returned to Saturday nights.

TV4 also offers investigative journalism programmes, most notably Kalla Fakta ("Cold Facts").

[edit] Jurisdiction

As TV4 was broadcast from Sweden, it has to follow much tighter advertising rules than its main competitors, TV3 and Kanal 5. Initially this mean't that TV4 wasn't allowed to include advertising breaks, meaning that the advertising had to be put in between the programmes.

Nonetheless, TV4 felt the urge to include advertising breaks. Therefore, it made several Inför programmes. The Inför programmes were short versions of TV4 programmes that were scheduled in the middle of programmes. For example, Fångarna på fortet would be divided into two parts and in between these, Inför Bingolotto would be shown. This allowed TV4 to broadcast advertising in the gaps between Inför Bingolotto and the two halves of Fångarna på fortet.

The Broadcasting Commission repeatedly ruled that the Inför programmes couldn't be considered as real programmes. In 2000 they were replaced by a programme called Dagens namn, in which the current namesday was mentioned. This was later on replaced by Om en bok in which famous people presented a book they enjoyed.

This ended in April 2002 when a new Radio and TV Law came into force, allowing TV4 to interrupt its programmes for advertising, but not to the same extent as TV3 and Kanal 5.

The Radio and TV Law also restricts the amount of advertising that can be shown to a certain percentage of the amount of programming.

Since TV4 was the only commercial channel allowed to broadcast terrestrially, it had to pay a special fee to government, consisting of a fixed fee and a variable element based on the amount of advertising that TV4 sells. TV4 worked to have this fee removed, especially with the launch of digital terrestrial television.

[edit] External links

Official site (Swedish)
Transcript from a Swedish television show, "Kalla Fakta" (Cold Facts) in May 2004, dealing with the Central Intelligence Agency abduction of Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery. Part 1, Part 2

Swedish television channels