The company – which was founded as AB Radiotjänst by a consortium of newspaper companies, the TT news agency, and radio manufacturing interests on 21 March 1924 – made its first broadcast on 1 January 1925: a relay of High Mass from St James's Church in Stockholm. It was officially renamed Sveriges Radio in 1957. Sveriges Radio was originally responsible for all broadcasting in Sweden, both radio and television, and hosted the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest. A reorganization in 1979 saw it become the parent company of four subsidiaries:
Sveriges Utbildningsradio, Swedish Educational Broadcasting; and
Sveriges Television, Swedish Television.
This structure was dissolved in 1993, with the national and local radio companies merging under the name of the old parent company: Sveriges Radio AB.
National radio
Four radio channels are available nationwide on FM and via the internet.
P1: news, culture, debate, readings, documentaries, etc. Almost no music is played, except in the daily summertime programme Sommar, in which guest presenters introduce their own choice of music.
P2: classical music, folk, jazz and world music; the channel also carries some minority-language programming.
P3: popular music and comedy targeted at a younger audience.
P4: popular music, entertainment and sport, chiefly targeted at an older audience; the network is made up of 25 local stations, each of which carries a mix of local and national programming.
Local radio
A large part of P4's programming is regional with 25 regions each broadcasting their own local programmes during most of the day.
Additional radio stations available locally on FM include:
Din gata 100,6 : playing mostly hiphop and R&B
Metropol 93,8 : multicultural youth station for Stockholm
SR P2 Musik : relays most of the output of P2, but replaces programming in minority and foreign languages with additional music output –
SR P6 89,6 : broadcasts in minority and foreign languages as well as relaying programmes from the web-based P2 Världen channel and the BBC World Service –
Other channels
Sveriges Radio also provides a number of channels through Digital audio broadcasting, using the DAB standard, and via the internet.
SR International is the international channel of Sveriges Radio and offers programming in the following languages:
Arabic –
English –
German –
Kurdish –
Persian –
Romani –
Russian –
Somali –
SR International is not responsible for programming in the domestic minority languages, Finnish and Sámi, which have their own dedicated channels. See Other channels above. On 16 March 2010, Radio Sweden announced the end of broadcasts on shortwave and medium wave as from 31 October 2010. External service programmes would continue on the internet only. Language services for immigrants to Sweden in Albanian, Syriac, Serbian, Bosnian, and Croat would also be discontinued, while programmes in English, German, Russian, Persian, Dari, and Kurdish would remain.
Criticism
The public's trust in the company, along with its Public Service counterparts in Sweden, may have decreased slightly during the 2000s. The decrease is most significant among right wing citizens.
