| Type | Broadcast radio, television and online |
|---|---|
| Country | Finland |
| Availability | National International |
| Founded | 1926 radio 1958 television |
| Slogan | One Word. A Thousand Stories. |
| Market share | 45.2% of Finnish television viewers and 53% of radio listeners (2010)[1][2] |
| Owner | 99.9% state-owned, supervised by an Administrative Council appointed by Parliament |
| Key people | CEO Lauri Kivinen |
| Launch date | September 9, 1926 |
| Official website | www.yle.fi |
Yleisradio (Finnish) and Rundradion (Swedish), abbreviated to Yle (pronounced [yle]), is Finland's national public-broadcasting company, founded in 1926. Yleisradio's organization shares many of its characteristics with its British counterpart, the BBC, on which it was largely modelled. It employs around 3,200 people in Finland.
Yle is a public limited company, owned by the Finnish state (with a 99.98 % share). It is funded primarily (90%) through a television fee, allocated by the cabinet, which is between €208.15 and €215.4 per year, as well as through private television broadcasting license fees. Yle has a status that could be described as that of a non-departmental public body. It is governed by a parliamentary governing council. Yle's turnover in 2006 was 383.5 million euro.
Today Yle operates four national television channels, 13 radio channels and services, and 25 regional radio stations. Finland being an officially bilingual country — around 5.5% of the population have Swedish as their mother-tongue — Yle provides radio and TV programming in Swedish through a department called Svenska Yle. As is customary in Finnish television and cinemas, foreign films and shows are generally subtitled on Yle's channels. Dubbing is used in cartoons intended for young children who have not yet learned to read, as well as many nature and history documentaries ("to avoid spoiling beautiful pictures").
In the field of international broadcasting, one of Yle's best known services is Nuntii Latini, the news in Latin, which is broadcast worldwide and made available over the Internet. Yle was also one of 23 founding broadcasting organisations of the European Broadcasting Union in 1950. Yle hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 in Helsinki, Finland.
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Yleisradio was founded in Helsinki on 29 May 1926. The first radio programme was transmitted on 9 September in that year, and this is the date generally considered to be the birthday of regular broadcasting activities in Finland. However, it was not until 1928 that Yle's broadcasts became available throughout the country. After this the broadcasting network was developed and by the beginning of the 1930s, 100,000 households were able to listen Yle's programmes.
In 1957 Yle made its first television broadcast tests, and the following year regular TV programming was started under the name Suomen Televisio (Finnish Television). The popularity of television in the country grew rapidly and in 1964, Yle obtained TES-TV and Tamvisio, which were merged to Yle TV2. From 1969 all of Yle's programming was made entirely in colour. During the past few years, Yle has founded a number of new radio and television channels and in 2007 there was a digital television switchover. A completely new digital channel Yle Teema was introduced, and the Swedish-language FST (Finlands Svenska Television) was moved from reserved analogue channel time to its own digital channel Yle FST5. Five channels were reserved, where the fifth channel was initially used for 24-hour news (Yle24). However, this channel was decommissioned, and the replacement, Yle Extra, was also decommissioned in 2007. Until August 4, 2008, the fifth channel was used to broadcast Yle TV1 with Finnish subtitles broadcast on programmes in foreign languages (without having to enable the digital set-top box's subtitle function).
Yle will phase out DAB broadcasts by the end of 2005 but will continue to broadcast these channels through DVB.
In radio, Yle was a legal monopoly until 1985, when local radio stations were permitted, and maintained a national monopoly until 1995, when national radio networks were allowed.
In the past, Yle has been seen in Finland as a "red" or leftist medium. This was true especially in 1965–1969, during the term of Director-General Eino S. Repo, who got the position with the backing of the Agrarian League and President Kekkonen (who was a member of the Agrarian Party), as he was Kekkonen's personal friend. He was accused of favouring student radicalism and young reporters with socially critical programs that demanded reforms, and Yle was given the nickname "Reporadio". After his resigning, he was demoted to the position of director of radio broadcasting, on the communist-leading People's Democratic League mandate.
Repo resigned in 1969, but according to Yle,[3] the "political mandate" remained, as Erkki Raatikainen was named director directly from the Social Democratic Party office. Subsequently, all directors after him until 2010 were Social Democrats.
The appointment of Lauri Kivinen in February 2010 excited much adverse comment as he was previously head of the Nokia Siemens group which had sold monitoring equipment to the Iranian Secret Service, allowing them to arrest political dissidents throughout the unrest in the fall of 2009.[4]
English-language newscaster Kimmo Wilska was fired on August 13, 2010 - after pretending to be caught drinking on-camera following an alcohol related news story on Yle News. Wilska's stunt was not well received by Yle management who fired him that same day. Wilska received much support after his termination.
The broadcasts on shortwave from Yle were closed at the end of 2006. Expatriate organisations had been campaigning for a continued service, but their efforts did not succeed in maintaining the service or even in slowing the process. The decision also affected a high-powered medium wave on 963 kHz (312m). A smaller medium wave covering the Gulf of Finland region (558 kHz, 538m) remained on air.
Conservative member of parliament Mr Pertti Hemmilä submitted in November a question in parliament about the plans of Yle to end its availability on international shortwave bands. In his question MP Hemmilä took up the low cost of the world band radio to the consumer travelling or living abroad. In her response the minister for communication and transport, Mrs Susanna Huovinen (sdp) noted that Yle would now be available via other means such as satellites and the Internet. She also underlined the fact that Yle is not under government control, but under direct parliamentary supervision. (The link above leads to texts of the question and the response in Finnish and Swedish at www.eduskunta.fi) [5]
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