Would you like a snail on your eye? : A quantitative study about Swedish public service television during 34 years time.

Our study shows if and how Swedish public service television has changed its content from the time when SVT had monopoly until this day when the competition is greater than ever. We got an insight in what has been presented to the audience by studying TV schedules from 1975 to 2009. The study examines four weeks during the years when the two main channels SVT1 and SVT2 have been broadcasting. One week each of these following years have been examined: 1975, 1985, 1995 and 2009. These years have been chosen to get an insight in what content the TV schedules presented before and after SVT got competition in the Swedish TV market. A total of 28 days and 56 TV schedules have been examined. This was done with a quantitative analysis and with an own model of ten categories that has helped us to sort the TV shows based on their content. Even though it was not a great difference, the result shows that the percentage of news has decreased since 1975. But it was not possible to see if the TV shows that replaced the news in the TV schedule was of an entertaining kind. The study also shows that a new kind of TV shows have taken a large spot in the schedules. Nowadays it is common that a TV show mix different kind of categories during its broadcasting time. One example is Gomorron Sverige. Furthermore we have seen that live debates take a large place in the TV schedules in 2009, especially during the day time. Besides that, the sizes of the categories have been pretty even during the 34 years. SVT has not made any significant changes since the monopoly was broken and the competition became a reality. We have also noticed that the broadcasting time has increased a lot since 1975. It is particularly obvious in the day time where there many years ago were no broadcasting at all. Our main purpose with the study was to examine if there is less news today in favour of TV shows of a more entertaining kind