TV3 (Viasat)

TV3 is the brand name used by Viasat's flagship channels in Scandinavia, the Baltic States, Hungary, and Finland. Viasat is part of the Swedish media company Modern Times Group. The first TV3 channel was launched on New Year's Eve 1987, breaking the monopoly on broadcasting in the Scandinavian languages.

TV3 broadcasts at least six separate channels in Scandinavia and the Baltic States, each with a share of localized entertainment and documentaries produced in the respective domestic languages. All the channels are broadcast from West Drayton, Middlesex in the United Kingdom, which means that Viasat is able to circumvent the more stringent criteria for commercial messages that apply in the Scandinavian countries, specifically in relation to advertisements aimed directly at children, and the stricter rules on interrupting programs with commercials.

At launch, there was one TV3 channel for all the Scandinavian countries. Separate channels for Denmark and Norway were soon launched so that there was a TV3 channel for each country. In the 1990s, TV3 expanded to cover the Baltic countries. Although Viasat's latest channels are not named TV3 they are all very much based on the TV3 model.

The channels that use the TV3 concept are:

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