Digital terrestrial television in Finland was launched on August 21, 2001. The analogue networks continued its broadcasts alongside the digital ones until September 1, 2007, when they were shut down nationwide. Before the analogue switchoff, the terrestrial network had three multiplexes: MUX A, MUX B and MUX C. MUX A contained the channels of the public broadcaster

Yleisradio Yleisradio Oy (Finnish, literally "General Radio Ltd." or "General Broadcast Ltd."; abbr. Yle ; sv, Rundradion Ab, italics=no), translated to English as the Finnish Broadcasting Company, is Finland's national public broadcasting company, founde ...

and MUX B was shared between the two commercial broadcasters:

MTV3 MTV3 ( fi, MTV Kolme, sv, MTV Tre) is a Finnish commercial television station. It had the biggest audience share of all Finnish TV channels until Yle TV1 (from Yle) took the lead. The letters MTV stand for Mainos-TV (literally "Advertisement ...

and

Nelonen Nelonen () is a Finnish commercial television channel. It started out as Helsinki's local television channel PTV in 1990 on the HTV cable network (now part of DNA Welho), and changed its name first to PTV4. On June 1, 1997, the channel expand ...

. MUX C contained channels of various other broadcasters. After the analogue closedown, a fourth multiplex named MUX E was launched. All Yles channels are broadcast free-to-air, so are a few commercial ones including

, Sub,

Jim Jim or JIM may refer to: * Jim (given name), a given name * Jim, a diminutive form of the given name James * Jim, a short form of the given name Jimmy * OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism * ''Jim'' (comics), a series by Jim Woodring * ''Jim ...

Nelonen Pro 2 Ruutu+ Urheilu 2 is a Finnish TV channel that specializes in sports. ''Urheilukanava'' was launched on August 27, 2001 and it was especially popular among Finnish football fans since the channel made it possible to watch both high standard domest ...

and

Kutonen Kutonen or VI divisioona is the seventh level in the Finnish football league system and comprises 265 teams. The VI divisioona was introduced in 1973 and in the mid-1990s became known as the Kutonen (''Number Six'' in English and ''Sexan'' in ...

. There are also several pay channels. These are sold only by

PlusTV PlusTV was a Finnish digital terrestrial television distributor owned by Finnish telecommunications company DNA. It is one of two pay television distributors in the Finnish terrestrial network, the other being Canal Digital. The package started ...

History

The official launch took place on August 21, 2001. Under the original plans the channel's available would be, other than the four analogue ones: Yle's news channel ( YLE24), Yle's cultural and educational channel (

YLE Teema Yle Teema was a Finnish television channel owned and operated by Finnish public broadcasting company Yle. The channel was dedicated to culture, sciences and learning. The channel was known for its "Theme Saturday" (Teemalauantai/Tema Lördag) which ...

), Yle's Swedish channel ( FST), a regional station (

CityTV Citytv is a Canadian television network owned by the Rogers Sports & Media subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The licence of the original Citytv station, granted the callsign of CITY-TV by the CRTC on November 25, 1971 to Cable Television Ass ...

), a sports channel ( Urheilukanava), a film channel from Helsinki Media (Elokuvakanava), a "school channel" from WSOY (Alfa+), a lifestyle channel ( Wellnet) and

Canal+ Canal+ (Canal Plus, , meaning 'Channel Plus'; sometimes abbreviated C+ or Canal) is a French premium television channel launched in 1984. It is 100% owned by the Groupe Canal+, which in turn is owned by Vivendi. The channel broadcasts several ki ...

. The Yle's channels, MTV3, Nelonen and Urheilukanava (later renamed Nelonen Sport) were on board from the start. WSOY eventually decided to withdraw from the project without launching their channel, as did Canal+ and Elokuvakanava. CityTV eventually turned into the entertainment channel SubTV. In 2003, MTV Oy started en "extra" channels, MTV3+, which offered some extra sports content. Nelonen also had an extra channel called Nelonen Plus.

TV Viisi TV5 (''TV Five'') is a Finnish television channel owned and operated by Warner Bros. Discovery EMEA. The channel launched in March 2004 but it was replaced by The Voice TV Finland in November 2004. It started operating again in September 2008 on ...

started in March 2004. Canal Digital launched pay television with three Canal+ channels in March 2004. A fourth Canal+ channel, Canal+ Sport was added in November. The

Disney Channel Disney Channel, sometimes known as simply Disney, is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney General Entertainment Content division of The Walt Disney Compan ...

was added in April 2006 and KinoTV, Eurosport, Discovery, MTV and Nickelodeon in September 2007. In September 2008 the rival operator PlusTV got exclusive rights to all, but CANAL+ channels and Canal Digital was left with them only. The last move in Canal Digital's antenna operations in Finland took place on September 16, 2009, when PlusTV got exclusive rights to CANAL+ channels too. Nowadays Canal Digital operates only via satellite.

was launched in November 2006, originally only broadcasting

MTV3 Max C More Max is a Finnish pay television channel owned and operated by MTV Oy. The channel started broadcasting in November 2006 and was originally dedicated to F1 coverage. History As MTV3+ In November 2002, MTV3 announced the launch of a di ...

and

Subtv Juniori C More Juniori (formerly ''Subtv Juniori'', ''Sub Juniori'', ''MTV3 Juniori'' and ''MTV Juniori'') is a Finland, Finnish television channel targeting children owned and operated by MTV Oy. The channel is part of the C More channels package and br ...

. They added

Subtv Leffa MTV Leffa was a Finnish television channel broadcasting movies. It was operated by MTV3 and TV4 AB and was the Finnish equivalent of TV4's movie channel TV4 Film. Dvrc and My Fresh Pony was created 14 July 2010 – 26 February 2012. The most of ...

in April and

Urheilu+kanava Ruutu+ Urheilu 1 is a package of Finnish sports-oriented television channels owned and operated by Nelonen. The story of the channel originally goes all the way back to the launch of digital terrestrial television on 27 August 2001, when among th ...

in June 2007. Both packages got more channels with the launch of MUX E in September 2007:

SVT Europa SVT World was an international television channel from the Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Television. The channel was available on satellite in Europe and much of Africa, Australia and Asia, terrestrially in parts of Finland and worldwide via IPTV. ...

and

MTV3 Fakta MTV Fakta was a Finnish documentary channel owned and operated by MTV3 MTV3 ( fi, MTV Kolme, sv, MTV Tre) is a Finnish commercial television station. It had the biggest audience share of all Finnish TV channels until Yle TV1 (from Yle ...

was added to PlusTV and

KinoTV Ruutu+ Leffat ja Sarjat (formerly Nelonen Prime, Nelonen Kino, KinoTV) is a Finnish television channel broadcasting movies and series. It is owned and operated by Nelonen. Series This is a list of Ruutu+ Leffat ja Sarjat's foreign series. * E ...

was added to Canal Digital, while

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...

Eurosport Eurosport is a group of pay television networks in Europe and parts of Asia. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery through Warner Bros. Discovery Sports#Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe properties, its international sports unit, it operates two ...

MTV Finland MTV Finland was a music and entertainment channel broadcasting to the Finnish market. The channel replaced MTV Nordic on September 18, 2005, however on February 22, 2019, it was replaced by the return of MTV Nordic. History * MTV Finland laun ...

and

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...

were added to both packages. September 2007 also saw the launch of the SveaTV package in Ostrobothnia which broadcasts

Swedish language Swedish ( ) is a North Germanic language spoken predominantly in Sweden and in parts of Finland. It has at least 10 million native speakers, the fourth most spoken Germanic language and the first among any other of its type in the Nordic countr ...

channels from a special multiplex. On the digital platform, subtitling isn't a part of the video stream, but is delivered as a separate data stream, which allows subtitling in multiple languages and the option to remove subtitles. Due to technical problems with the subtitles, many people cancelled their television licenses. This meant that Yle had to make drastic budget cuts. The digital channel YLE Extra was closed on December 31, 2007 and was replaced by YLE TV1+, a simulcast of TV1 with subtitles included in the video stream. TV1+ was replaced by

in September 2008. PlusTV took over Canal Digital's basic channel package ParempiTV on October 1, 2008. This meant that subscriptions for all pay channels were handled by PlusTV, with the exception of the Canal+ channels, which were still sold by Canal Digital. The pornographic channel Canal 69 ended its broadcasts in August 2009. On September 10, 2009, the news pay sports channel URHOtv starts broadcasting.{{cite web, url=http://www.digitv.fi/sivu.asp?path=1;699;11908, title=URHOtv aloittaa lähetykset antenniverkossa 10. syyskuuta, date=August 24, 2009, publisher=DigiTV

References

External links

DigiTV

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

Television in Finland

History

See also

References

External links