TV8 is a television channel owned by

Viaplay Group Viaplay Group AB, formerly known as Nordic Entertainment Group AB (NENT Group), is a Swedish media and entertainment company headquartered in Stockholm. The company operates the namesake video streaming services Viaplay and Viafree, advertising ...

broadcasting to Sweden. It focuses on current affairs, documentaries and drama. The channel was started by the private equity firm

Ratos Ratos AB (portmanteau for Ragnar and Torsten Söderberg) is a Swedish private equity company founded in 1934 and still controlled by the Söderberg family. Ratos is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. History The Söderberg brothers establi ...

in 1997 and was sold to MTG in 1999. For some years TV8 timeshared with the Scandinavian

History Channel History (formerly The History Channel from January 1, 1995 to February 15, 2008, stylized as HISTORY) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney ...

in the evening and

Bloomberg Television Bloomberg Television (on-air as Bloomberg) is an American-based pay television network focusing on business and capital market programming, owned by Bloomberg L.P. It is distributed globally, reaching over 310 million homes worldwide. It is hea ...

at night and during the day; TV8's own shows were only broadcast during a few hours in the late evening. During the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 Bloomberg was replaced by the Fox News Channel. Fox News continued eventually but in December Bloomberg returned on some key slots during daytime. In November 2004, MTG launched their own historical channel Viasat History in the Nordic region. At the same time the programmes from History Channel disappeared from TV8. It was replaced by TV8's own programmes. The Fox News broadcasts were discontinued in September 2006. Nowadays TV8 shows English-language broadcasts from German news channel Deutsche Welle during the days and nights instead. TV8 is profiled as a commercial channel with own high quality-programming, about such matters as financial and foreign news. TV8 is also showing several talkshows about domestic politics. Documentaries, mostly from the United Kingdom, are also a part of the prime time schedules, as well as high quality drama from the UK and France. TV8 has so far attracted few viewers. In September 2007 the channel was launched in the analogue package of

Com Hem Com Hem was a Swedish brand owned by Tele2 AB which supplied Triple Play services that included cable television, broadband internet and fixed-line telephone. Founded in 1983 as Televerket Kabel-TV as part of the former state-owned Televerke ...

, the dominant cable distributor in Sweden. This means that the number of potential viewers have increased substantially. MTG have also started to promote the channel more. TV8 is also available through digital terrestrial broadcasts in Sweden (through subscription-based Boxer), as well as on the satellite platforms of Viasat and Canal Digital.

References

External links

* {{Swedish television channels Television channels in Sweden TV8 Sweden Television channels and stations established in 1997 1997 establishments in Sweden