Television in Sweden

Television began in Sweden in 1954 with test transmissions, prior to the opening of the first station, Radiotjänst, two years later. A second channel was launched in 1969. Commercial television arrived in the 1980s through cable television and in 1992, the country's first terrestrial commercial channel was launched.

Typically, non-Swedish content maintains the original language soundtrack while subtitled into Swedish. This includes foreign interviews embedded into news and magazine programmes as well as SVT's Finnish news bulletin (Uutiset). Conversely, interview responses given in Swedish aired on Finnish or Sami news bulletins are subtitled into the main language of that respective bulletin. Non-Swedish programming intended for children is, however, usually dubbed into Swedish. Regardless of the intended audience, some shows receive a Swedish title, which is used in programme schedules.

Many of the channels targeting Sweden are not actually broadcasting from Sweden, but from other countries (mostly from the United Kingdom). This is done to avoid the Swedish Broadcasting Law which restricts advertising heavily.

In addition to the channels listed below, viewers close to the border with Norway, Denmark or Finland can receive channels from those respective countries as a result of signal spillover and some satellite subscription packages offer some channels from these countries.