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Media Landscape - Finland

INTRODUCTION

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Finland is industrially highly developed and technologically advanced, sparsely inhabited country with a population of 5.2 million, including a Swedish-speaking minority of 290,000 people or 5.5 per cent, mostly living along the western and southern coastline.

In Lapland lives a Sámi-speaking minority of 1,700 inhabitants. Some 133,000 speak a foreign language as mother language. The area is of 338,000 km2 with a density of 17 persons per km2. There are 2.4 million households and 80 per cent of people live in urban or semi-urban municipalities. The share of aged population is slightly increasing. 86 per cent of women aged 25-54 are employed outside the home.

The total turnover of mass media makes 2.7 per cent of GDP. On average, a household spends 4 per cent of total expenditures on mass media. Expenditures on telecommunications by households have grown. An average household spends about € 1,000 per year on telecommunications charges.


1. WRITTEN PRESS

In all, 53 dailies are issued from four to seven times a week, with a circulation of 2.3 million copies. Of dailies 31 appear seven days a week with 1.6 million copies, more than in any other Nordic country.

Third in newspaper consumption in the world after Norway and Japan, with 522 copies sold per 1,000 inhabitants in 2005. There are some 145 free-of-charge papers. The strength of newspapers in subscriptions and early morning delivery is shown by the fact that nearly 70 per cent of households subscribe to a newspaper at home. Of aged 10 or over, 76 per cent read a newspaper or afternoon paper daily. There are eight national dailies. The largest is the politically unaffiliated Helsingin Sanomat of SanomaWSOY (431,000), the largest subscription based daily in the Nordic countries.

In the ownership structure there is an accelerating trend towards newspaper chains in Finland. In 2005, there were 22 newspaper chains, of which three publish Swedish-language newspapers. Being officially a bilingual country, Finland has 13 newspapers published in Swedish. Two major publishers account for 56 per cent of the aggregate circulation of the dailies, SanomaWSOY and Alma Media. Of all 53 dailies, 10 titles appear outside the chain ownership.

The second biggest group, by sales volume, after newspapers, is that of magazines. There are about 2,600 magazines and periodicals, and if publications appearing at least four times a year are counted, the figure is some 5,000 titles.


2. AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA

Finland has traditionally had a dual system of public and commercial television broadcasters. In nation-wide TV operation there are two public service and two commercial generalist channels. The public service Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) transmits via YLE TV1 and YLE TV2. The largest and oldest private TV channel, MTV3 is owned by the Swedish Nordic Broadcasting Company, since 2005. The second commercial national television network Channel Four Finland (Nelonen) belongs to SanomaWSOY.

The public service company YLE broadcasts radio signals on three nationwide channels in Finnish: YLE Radio 1, Radio Suomi and YLEX and two channels in Swedish: YLE Radio Vega and YLE Radio Extrem. YLE operates 20 regional windows in Finnish and five in Swedish in the coastal area.

In 2006, there were 77 commercial radio stations. The biggest commercial radio companies are in foreign ownership. The ownership of the first – and until now the only – nation-wide commercial radio station, Radio Nova, was transferred to Nordic Broadcasting Company (Bonnier/Proventus, Sweden) in 2005.

The market for commercial local radio operation is highly saturated. The national public service radio channels still dominate the market accounting for 51 per cent of all listening time, the figures for private radio being 49 per cent – 12 per cent for Radio Nova and 37 per cent for other private stations – in 2005.


3. DIGITAL MEDIA

The switch over to digital TV is in August 2007. The amount of commercial digital channels is increasing. In all, 14 digital channels are operating including free of charge and pay-tv channels. In October 2006, over 50 per cent or 1.1 million of Finnish households had a digital terminal or an integrated digital TV set.

The public service company YLE’s core services for digital terrestrial broadcasting will be the generalist channels TV1 and TV2. In addition, it has three nation-wide specialist digital channels. The commercial nation-wide digital channels are MTV3+ and Subtv (entertainment and fiction), both owned by MTV3, and Nelonen Plus (Channel Four), owned by SanomaWSOY, and digital sport channel Urheilukanava, owned by MTV3 and by SanomaWSOY. MTV3 has announced to launch new digital pay-TV channels


4. ONLINE MEDIA

The Internet penetration is approaching that of newspapers, it was 70 per cent in 2006. The number of Internet connections was 366 per 1,000 inhabitants. Broadband connections are used in 36 per cent or 860,000 households.

Most newspapers have a regularly updated online version and 50 papers have launched PDF-versions that are complete online copies of printed papers. In most cases, the front page of PDF version is free while wider contents and archives are for fee only. There are five media-owned websites among the top-ten visited portals.


5. NEWS AGENCIES

Practically there is one national news provider, the Finnish News Agency (STT). It is independent, bilingual and its major owners are Alma Media, SanomaWSOY and TS-Group (Turun Sanomat), along with some other 50 media companies. The combined circulation of the newspapers that publish STT news is practically that of all newspapers.


6. MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS

The central employers’ organisation is the Federation of the Finnish Media Industry. The major journalist organisation is the Union of Journalists (14,000 members) that negotiates collective agreements in the field of media.

In 2005, the Union of Journalists has adopted a. renewed version of ‘Guidelines for good journalistic practise’ and this code of conduct is recognised by all relevant media houses.


7. NATIONAL MEDIA POLICIES

The general frame for the communication policy is stated in the Government Programme (2003) under the heading ‘The policy in information society and communications’.

The media policy is aimed at improving productivity and competitiveness. A new constitutional law, the Act on the Exercise of Freedom of Expression in Mass Media (2004) regulates all media regardless its technology covering the responsibilities of editors, corrections in publications and rights to anonymity of sources of publishers.

The relevant national bodies for electronic communication policy are the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (Ficora) and the Ministry of Education. The Government grants operating licences for radio and television operation. The EU regulatory framework for all electronic communications is implemented in Finnish legislation.

There is no anti-trust legislation on media concentration.


8. ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS

The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (Ficora) supervises the use of radio frequencies. Customers can turn to Ficora with complaints relating to the Act on Television and Radio Operations and its decisions can be appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court.

The public service broadcasting company (YLE) operates under an act of its own. Its highest decision-making body is the Administrative Council, elected by Parliament. Private radio and television operation are regulated by separate legislation. The Act on the Exercise of Freedom of Expression in Mass Media (2004) applies to publishing and programme making. Communication via information networks is subject to the legislation on the mass media.

The Council for Mass Media was set up by publishers, journalists and their associations to act as a self-regulatory body for mass media content and it cultivates responsible freedom in mass media. The monitoring of harmful Internet content is currently undertaken by the Council for Mass Media in Finland, the Finnish Information Processing Association’s Ethics Advisory Committee, the Council on Ethics in Advertising, the Consumer Agency and the Consumer Ombudsman.


9. MAIN RECENT MEDIA DEVELOPMENTS

High readership for printed media continues, but not at the previous rate especially among the younger generation. The amount of media outlets has especially increased in radio channels, TV channels, and in the area of new digital online media.

The share of foreign ownership has risen in Finnish electronic media when the Nordic Broadcasting Company (Bonnier/Proventus, Sweden) acquired the biggest private television (MTV3) and radio operation (Nova), and a semi-national radio (Sävelradio) from the Alma Media in 2005.

The newspaper companies especially are developing their presence in the web. Major newspaper houses have intensified their internationalization to the Baltic countries, Russia and wider Europe.

The newspaper markets are nearly saturated and new market niches are hard to find. Major newspaper companies are still mostly in national ownership. The newspapers have launched more ‘life-style’ and entertainment supplements in magazine format.

Major newspaper companies in bigger cities have entered into the market free-of-charge papers. The aim is to compete of local and classified advertising expenditures. The biggest media company in Finland, SanomaWSOY has recently bought the local edition of the free-delivery paper Metro that is delivered in 18 cities.

The newspaper companies have increased the co-operation between their chain papers in news gathering to face the increasing production costs.

Especially, the small and middle size non-daily newspapers have changed their format to tabloid. Of newspapers published from one to three times a week 93 per cent and of those published from four to seven times a week 42 per cent are issued in tabloid format. However, from seven-day dailies the great majority are broadsheet papers, only 16 per cent or five of those 31 papers are tabloids.

In the entertainment industry, the competition has increased when the console and game industry has challenged the recording industry and cinema admissions. The television companies are worried about their audience rates when younger people use of prime time more for playing in the Internet than watching at television programmes and advertisements.

The spreading of broadband will obviously accelerate the shift of prime-time use, especially among the younger audience segments.

The commercial local radio stations have developed towards tight scheduled formats with robotised play lists but with very thin journalistic content. However, the local channels have built some new modes to be in interaction with the help of Internet-pages, mobile phones and SMS messages.

One reason for the decrease in the circulation figures of the newspapers might be the increased popularity of online-versions of the titles. Non-subscribers are moving to journalistic web-publications or PDF versions. The share of those readers who read only web-publications has grown, and typically among the younger readers. The other reason is that the number of single-person households has increased, particularly in larger cities and it is less probable that these households subscribe to or buy a newspaper than family-households.


10. PRIME SOURCES FOR DETAILED INFORMATION

Books and Articles

  • Ala-Fossi, Marko & Jauert, Per (2006) Nordic Radio on the Digital Era. In: Radio, TV & Internet in the Nordic Countries. Meeting the Challenges of New Media Technology. Nordic Media Trends 9. Ed. by Ulla Carlsson. Göteborg: Nordicom, Göteborg University, pp. 65-87.
  • Aslama, Minna, Hellman, Heikki, and Sauri, Tuomo (2004) Digitalizing Diversity: Public Service Strategies and Television Programm Supply in Finland in 2002. The International Journal on Media Management, 6: 3&4, pp. 152-161.
  • Aslama, Minna, Sonck, Fredrik, and Wallenius, Jaana (2006) Finnish Television Programming 2005. Publications of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, 40/2006. (English Summary) http://www.mintc.fi/oliver/upl327-Julkaisuja%2040_2006.pdf
  • Brown, Allan (2005) Finland: Uncertain Digital Future in a Small Market. In: Allan Brown & Robert G. Picard (Ed.), Digital Terrestrial Television in Europe. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlabaum, pp. 223-243.
  • Heinonen, Ari and Kinnunen, Terhi (2005) Finland – Cautious Online Strategies. In: Richard van der Wurff & Edmund Lauf (Eds.), Print and Online Newspapers in Europe. A comparative analysis in 16 countries. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, pp. 117-130.
  • Hujanen, Jaana (2003) From consuming printed news to making online journalism? Young Finns' newspaper reading at the Millennium. Nordicom Review 2, pp. 61-70.
  • Finnish Mass Media 2004 (English Summary). Official Statistics of Finland, Culture and the media 2004:2. Helsinki: Statistics Finland. [In Finnish]
  • Picard, Robert, G. (2003) Media Economics, Content, and Diversity: Primary Results from a Finnish Study. In: Hovi-Wasastjerna, P. (Ed.), Media Culture Research Programme. Helsinki: Academy of Finland, Ilmari Publications, University of Arts and Design, pp. 107-120.
  • Picard, Robert G., Grönlund, Mikko (2003) Development and Effects of Finnish Press Subsidies. Journalism Studies, Vol. 4, Number 1, pp. 105-119.
  • Salokangas, Raimo (1999) From Political to National, Regional and Local. The Newspaper Structure in Finland. Nordicom Review 1, pp. 77-105.
  • Sauri, Tuomo (2001) Mass Media in Finland: Structure and Economy (English Summary). Culture and the Media 2001:1. Helsinki: Statistics Finland. [In Finnish]
  • Sauri, Tuomo (2006) Radio, TV and Internet in Finland. In: Media Trends 2006 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Radio, TV & Internet. Nordic Media Trends 8. Compiled by Eva Harrie. Göteborg: Nordicom, Göteborg University, pp. 17-23.

Electronic Sources and Links


11. AUTHOR

Dr. Jyrki Jyrkiäinen, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Tampere, Finland. 20.10.2006

Contact Information: Jyrki Jyrkiäinen (Mr.) Dr. Soc. Sc., Senior Lecturer UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE Department of Journalism and Mass Communication
FIN-33014 UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE

Street address: Kalevantie 4, C 257. Tel. +358-3-3551 6307
Mobile phone: +358-50-541 6396
Fax: +358-3-3551 6248
http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/tiedotus/laitos/jyrkiainen.html


12. MEDIA RESOURCES

Newspapers

Audio/Video Media

Media Institutions

Blogs/Civil Media

Excerpt from EUROPEAN MEDIA GOVERNANCE: THE NATIONAL AND REGIONAL DIMENSIONS, published by Intellect (http://www.intellectbooks.com).

Countries

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