Swedish commercial channel TV4 joins the European Broadcasting Union, EBU, making Swedish state broadcaster SVT lose its solerights to distributing Eurovision programmes — thereamong possibly the Eurovision Song Contest.
The days of SVT's Eurovision monopoly in Sweden are well and truly over, now that commercial nationwide channel TV4 joins the EBU family, making Sweden the last Scandinavian country to have a commercial channel join the union.
TV4 went officially on the air on 2nd March, 1992, and thus also broke SVT's monopoly on the terrestrial distribution network. Some now expect TV4 to try to take over the rights to broadcasting the Eurovision Song Contest from SVT, which has had Eurovision monopoly ever since the first Swedish participation in 1958. The SVT management are expected to do everything they can to keep their solerights.
Some, however, suggest that SVT's fear is exaggerated. In Denmark and Norway, commercial broadcasters have long thrived on membership of the EBU, without ever succeeding in taking away the relay rights for the Eurovision Song Contest from the state broadcasters, DR and NRK respectively.
The TV4 group also comprises TV4 Plus, TV4 Interaktiv and sixteen local TV stations across Sweden.
