TV8 (Sweden)

TV8
Launched	15 October 1997
Owned by	Modern Times Group
Picture format	576i (SDTV)
Audience share	1.0% (2008, [1])
Broadcast area	Sweden
Website	http://www.tv8.se/
Availability
Boxer	Channel 8
Satellite
Viasat	Channel 8
Cable
Com Hem	Channel 8

TV8 is a television channel owned by Modern Times Group broadcasting to Sweden. It focuses on current affairs, documentaries and drama. The channel was started by the private equity firm Ratos in 1997 and was sold to MTG in 1999.

For some years TV8 timeshared with the Scandinavian History Channel in the evening and Bloomberg Television in the night and daytime; TV8 own shows was 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 not succeeded in attracting a lot of viewers. In September 2007 the channel was launched in the analogue package of Com Hem, the dominant cable distributor in Sweden. This means that the number of potential viewers have increased substantially.^[2] MTG have also started to promote the channel more.

TV8 is also available through digital terrestrial broadcasts in Sweden, as well as on the satellite platforms of Viasat and Canal Digital.

References

1. Årsrapport 2008 (PDF). Mediamätning i Skandinavien. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 22, 2014.
2. "Nya kanaler i Com Hems analoga grundutbud" (PDF) (Press release). Com Hem. May 30, 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 27, 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-16.