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, found ...

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 "Advertisem ...

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 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 i ...

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 YLE24 was a Finnish language TV channel broadcast by Yle 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 Com ...

), 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, science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of ...

), 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 ...

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

Canal+ Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flo ...

. 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 MTV Sub (formerly TVTV!, Subtv and Sub) is a Finnish TV channel owned by MTV Oy. The previous owner Alma Media sold Sub and its sister channels (MTV3, C More Max, MTV Ava Radio Nova and Sävelradio) to Swedish Bonnier and Proventus in 200 ...

. 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 Comp ...

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 d ...

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 in April and Urheilu+kanava 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 IP ...

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 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 Chan ...

Eurosport Eurosport is a group of pay television networks in Europe and parts of Asia. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery through its international sports unit, it operates two main channels— Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2—across most of its territorie ...

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 channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Group. It ...

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 cou ...

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 YLE Extra was a Finnish television channel owned and operated by Yle Yleisradio Oy ( Finnish, literally "General Radio Ltd." or "General Broadcast Ltd."; abbr. Yle ; sv, Rundradion Ab, italics=no), translated to English as the Finnish Broadc ...

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 Bot ...

Television in Finland

History

See also

References

External links