Yle

Yleisradio Oy (; ), abbreviated as Yle (; formerly styled in all uppercase until 2012), translated into English as the Finnish Broadcasting Company, is Finland's national public broadcasting company. Founded as a private enterprise in 1926 and nationalised in 1934, Yle is governed by an administrative council elected by the Parliament of Finland and is structured as a limited company, 99.98% of which is owned by the Finnish state. It employs around 3,000 people in Finland.

Yle operates three national television channels, eight radio services, 23 regional radio stations, a multilingual website, and a multimedia streaming platform. As Finland is constitutionally bilingual—around 5.5% of the population speaks Swedish as their native language—Yle provides content in Swedish through its Swedish-language department, Svenska Yle. Additional content is provided in Sámi and six other languages.

Yle is primarily funded by an annual tax assessed on Finnish citizens and corporations (the Yle tax). Yle receives no advertising revenue, as all of its services are advertisement-free. In 2025, Yle's annual revenue was about €550 million.

Yle is a founding member of both the European Broadcasting Union and Nordvision, and was also a member of the International Radio and Television Organisation. In 2007, Yle hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki.

History

thumb|right|Equipment made in Yleisradio's workshop at the end of the 1930s intended for broadcasting the [[1940 Summer Olympics]]

thumb|Yle Headquarters, 1933-1968 at Fabianinkatu 15

right|thumb|Yle's former headquarters from 1993 to 2016, known as Iso Paja ("the big workshop"), in [[Pasila, Helsinki, with the Pasilan linkkitorni in the background at right. Now occupied by the VR Group.]]

thumb|Yle's current headquarters at the (formerly Radiotalo) in Pasila.

The beginning

(Finland's General Radio) was founded in Helsinki on 29 May 1926 following more than a year of planning by a commission formed among public and private entities to bring public broadcasting to Finland. The name was taken from the Finnish Defence Forces, where the term meant a radio broadcast that could be heard by everyone. The first programme was broadcast on 9 September 1926 from a studio at Unioninkatu 20 using assets purchased the day before from a radio station operated by (the Finnish Radio Association), an advocacy group that had been promoting radio in Finland since 1923. The initial programme contained brief opening remarks in both Finnish and Swedish, followed by music. Daily scheduled broadcasting began on 1 December 1926 with programming between 12:00–13:00 and 18:00–22:00 (17:00–22:00 on Sundays); two evenings per week were dedicated to Swedish programming, with the rest of the schedule in Finnish. The radio battalion of the Finnish Defence Forces had also established a medium wave (AM band) radio station in Katajanokka at the former Russian Empire Baltic Fleet officer casino (now Katajanokka Casino) in April 1923. Yle's management initially decided to use this site to transmit programming to the Helsinki region, continuing a practice begun by the Finnish Radio Association.

Yle's primary source of revenue came from the sales of broadcast receiving licences that had been required to own and operate a radio in Finland since 1919. In order to bring more order to licencing, the Parliament of Finland in 1927 passed a law turning the radio licence into a mandatory annual fee to be collected by the Postal and Telegraph Service on all Finnish households owning a radio. Additionally, parliament directed that a portion of licence fee income go to Yle and also codified into law that Yle was forbidden from airing commercial advertising. The completion of the Lahti longwave transmitter in 1928 improved conditions by making Yle's broadcasts available to most of the country through longwave. In 1933, Yle's headquarters moved to 15, where they would stay until 1968, when they moved to , and then to in 1993.

From private to public

At the start, Yle was owned by banks, insurance companies, and smaller groups. In total, 59 different entities were shareholders; the Finnish Radio Association owned the most number of shares overall. Wholly private ownership, however, would not last, as the path to nationalising Yle began in early 1929, when Yle declined to air programming commemorating the tenth anniversary of prohibition in Finland, citing a programme policy of political neutrality. Reception reports came in from around Europe and as far away as North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The results of the tests convinced Yle to construct a high-power shortwave facility. A site in Pori was selected for this purpose, with construction beginning in 1939. The new facility was to start broadcasting in time for Yle to provide extensive international broadcasts of the planned 1940 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, but the Olympics were cancelled and the outbreak of World War II prevented the facility from being built fully as intended. Nevertheless, shortwave broadcasts from Pori commenced in 1941. Following the war, Yle obtained a powerful new transmitter and constructed an antenna array technically superior to what had originally been planned. An official inauguration of the facility followed in 1948. By the end of 1950, Yle had decommissioned the Helsinki and Lahti facilities and transferred all shortwave broadcasts to Pori, where they remained until 1987, when Yle constructed a new facility in a rural setting west of Pori. Sweden's Sveriges Radio| aired newscasts in Finnish in the interim. Yle later reactivated stations in Vyborg and Sortavala during the Continuation War, but gave them up in 1944 before the signing of the Moscow Armistice. Shortly before the beginning of the Lapland War, German troops destroyed Yle's station in Rovaniemi. No other stations were directly attacked during World War II, although Yle's transmitter building in Helsinki, headquarters in Helsinki, and station in Oulu suffered damage from nearby bombings. The first meeting of an administrative council selected under the new law took place in June 1949. Wuolijoki was immediately dismissed as director general and replaced with economist Einar Sundström, who served until 1964 and returned neutrality to Yle's programming policy. the number of households with a radio licence went up by 68,547 that year, the largest increase on record. Compared to the original service, which became known as (the General Programme), the new service played more music and had a lighter tone. In 1963, the Parallel Programme began airing the light music programme (Melody Radio) for much of the broadcast day, in part to discourage listening to the emergent offshore radio stations at the time. As even more FM stations came online, another service was launched for the Swedish-speaking coastal regions of Finland to provide a consistent, daily schedule of Swedish programming that contrasted with the irregular scheduling of Swedish content in the General Programme. By the end of the 1960s, Yle had enough active transmitters to allow both the Parallel Programme and the General Programme to be heard on FM throughout most of Finland. Meanwhile, the original AM network was initially kept in operation airing either the General Programme or Swedish programming, but over time AM transmitters were gradually eliminated, with the final one turned off by 2007. In 1964, Yle acquired the nearly-bankrupt commercial television channel Tesvisio in Helsinki and its related channel Tamvision in Tampere. Both were merged to become Yle's second television channel, now known as Yle TV2. The headquarters for the channel were placed in Tampere after the city's leadership allocated a site near Tohloppi for the construction of appropriate facilities. Next, Repo went on to transform the type of programming Yle aired, especially on television, where the amount of mass-appeal entertainment programming was decreased to make way for artistic and informational programming designed to "stimulate thought" around "new ways of seeing reality" and educate audiences to Finland's heritage and culture. Underlying what was called an "informational broadcasting policy" was Repo's pluralistic belief in providing a neutral platform for the expression of all views on a subject, even views considered radical.

Repo's time as director general ended in 1969 after the administrative council opted not to renew his term. In response, parliament soon reduced the power of Yle's director general and passed a law prescribing criminal penalties for the "abuse of broadcasting responsibility". Yle had been airing content in the Sámi languages since 1948, but in limited quantities broadcast initially from Oulu, then from Rovaniemi beginning in 1960. The distance of both cities to the Sámi homeland of Finland made reception of the programming difficult for its intended audience. and maintained a national monopoly until 1995, when commercial national radio networks were allowed. In television, Yle had a monopoly on transmission infrastructure and broadcast licences—but not programming—from 1964 until 1986, when the television channel Kolmoskanava launched as a joint venture between Yle, Nokia, and the commercial broadcaster MTV (), which had existed since 1957. Previously, MTV programming aired exclusively on Yle's television channels under an arrangement whereby MTV purchased airtime from Yle, mostly in prime time.

Despite the launch of Kolmoskanava, MTV continued to also air programming on Yle's television channels, causing MTV to compete with itself for advertising revenue by having programming air on up to three different channels at once. What did change was Yle being able to fully control and program its television channels for the first time. This resulted in modifications to the type of programming Yle's television channels aired, since MTV had concentrated on airing popular entertainment largely imported from the United States, whilst Yle concentrated on airing domestic programming of varying genres. By the time Yle implemented the act's provisions in the mid-1990s, its market share had stabilised.

Entering the digital age

In the 2000s, Yle established several new radio and television channels. Digital terrestrial television in Finland launched in 2001 and the changeover from analogue was completed in 2007. During the digitisation process, Yle introduced a completely new television channel, (Yle Theme), and the Swedish-language programming blocks that since 1988 had been branded as (Finland's Swedish Television, FST) moved from TV1 and TV2 to their own digital channel called YLE FST5 (later renamed Yle Fem|). In addition to these four channels (TV1, TV2, , and ), a fifth channel, YLE24, was launched in 2001 for 24-hour news programming. This channel was replaced by YLE Extra, a channel attempting to cater to youth, which was in turn decommissioned in 2007. Until 4 August 2008, the fifth channel was used to broadcast Yle TV1 with Finnish subtitles on programmes in foreign languages (without having to enable the TV's or digital set-top box's subtitle function).

Due to proposals drawn up by a working group formed in 2003 by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the 2000s also brought the most significant changes to the administrative structure of Yle since its founding. The channel was discontinued in 2014 when high-definition versions of all of Yle's television channels were launched, eliminating the need for Yle HD. Yle's television channels continued to also broadcast in standard definition until 2025.

Yle's presence on the internet dates to 1995, when yle.fi was launched; news began to be posted online from 1996. In 2007, Yle launched the multimedia streaming platform Yle (Yle in Swedish), providing a repository for live and recorded audio and video content. By 2023, Yle Areena was the most popular streaming service in Finland, having been used by 67% of Finnish consumers in that year.

Since 2013

Following years of debate over its continued relevance, the television licence fee was abolished in 2013 (the separate radio licence fee had been eliminated at the end of 1976). The largest sale took place in 2016 when Yle sold () to Yle's pension fund, which then leased the building to a number of different companies, among them VR Group for use as its headquarters. was built in 1993 at the intersection of (Radio Street) and (Television Street) in Pasila and served as the headquarters of a campus containing several Yle buildings. Following the sale, Yle moved its headquarters into the adjacent (Radio House), opened in 1978 as Yle's primary radio production facility. was renamed (Media House) in 2017 to reflect its new role within Yle.

After the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election, a working group consisting of members of each Finnish political party convened to evaluate Yle's funding level. The outcome was announced the following year in the form of a two-phase budget cut beginning in 2025 with a freeze of Yle's annual budget for three years and continuing in 2026 with an increase in the value-added tax Yle pays from a rate of 10% to 14%. In total, Yle's budget was reduced by about €66 million, representing the largest cut in Yle's history. As a consequence, Yle eliminated nearly 10% of its workforce in 2025 and made a number of programming changes, in particular to Yle Radio Suomi, where most regional programming was discontinued. Other changes included the elimination of announcers on Yle Radio 1 and the elimination of live in-vision continuity on Yle TV1.

A number of initiatives were created to commemorate Yle's centenary in 2026. One involved cooperation between Yle and a consortium of four Finnish universities to carry out the largest-ever academic research project studying Yle's history from a cultural perspective. Further commemorations included Posti Group releasing a set of stamps and the Helsinki Mint issuing a €2 commemorative coin.

Logo history

File:Oy-Suomen-Ab-Logo-1930.png|alt=|Yle's first logo was used from 1926 to 1940.

File:Yleisradio logo 1940.svg|Yle's second logo used from 1940 to 1965. Yle Radio Suomi used a modified version of this logo from 2010–12.

File:Yleisradio logo 1965.svg|Yle's third logo used from 1965 to 1991.

File:Yleisradion logo 1990.svg|Yle's fourth logo used from May 1990 to 30 September 1999.

File:YLE logo.svg|Yle's fifth logo used from 1 October 1999 to 4 March 2012.

File:Ylen logo.svg|Yle's sixth and current logo since 5 March 2012.

File:Ylen logo (white).svg|Variant of Yle's sixth and current logo since 5 March 2012.

File:Yle 100.svg|Yle's 100th anniversary in 2026

</gallery>

Governance

Yle is governed by a three-tiered administrative structure consisting of an administrative council selected by the Parliament of Finland, a board of directors selected by the administrative council, and a chief executive officer (CEO) selected by the board of directors.

Administrative council

Yle's highest decision-making body is its administrative council, which oversees the administration of Yle as a company and makes decisions on strategy. In practice, throughout Yle's history, the administrative council has largely or exclusively been made up of sitting members of parliament. The board of directors oversees Yle's operations. Current members of the administrative council are forbidden from concurrently serving on the board of directors, as are senior managers from within Yle, members of parliament, and government officials.

As is customary in Finland, foreign films and TV programmes (as well as segments of local programmes that feature foreign language content, like news reports) are generally subtitled on Yle's channels. Former, discontinued channels are: Kolmoskanava, YLE24, YLE Extra, (2008) and (2011–2014).

Radio

thumb|Yle's former regional studio in [[Tampere.]]

Finnish language

: A channel for culture, in-depth current affairs, and other speech-based programming. Classical music (concerts by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra), jazz, folk, world music, and religious music also feature. Yle Radio 1 was established in June 1990, as part of Yle's restructuring of its radio channels and was known as Radio Ylen Ykkönen until 2003.
YleX (formerly Radiomafia): A fast-tempo programme-flow channel featuring new music in tune with popular culture, targeted at 17- to 27-year-olds. The percentage of music is 70%. New domestic and foreign pop, rock, and several themed music programmes.
Yle Radio Suomi: A full-service format with national and regional news as well as sports and entertainment. Musical fare comprises domestic and foreign hits and adult and nostalgic pop. There are 18 regional variants of Yle Radio Suomi—one for every region of Finland except Åland. primarily broadcasting to the areas of Finland where Swedish-speakers form a majority or sizable minority.

Sámi languages

Yle Sámi Radio: A network covering most of Lapland. Produced in co-operation with NRK Sápmi and Sameradion. The service does not broadcast Sámi-language programming continuously; at certain times, Yle Radio Suomi is simulcast instead.

Multilingual

: A service available on FM in Helsinki and throughout Finland via digital television that primarily rebroadcasts content from other members of the European Broadcasting Union, particularly BBC World Service in English. Broadcasts in Danish via DR, Estonian via ERR, German via NDR, French via RFI, Norwegian via NRK, and Spanish via RNE are also provided, as is a brief daily newscast in English produced by Yle.

Former stations

Yle began broadcasting radio in digital using the DAB standard in 1997, but commercial radio broadcasters in Finland showed no interest in the format, causing Yle to discontinue all digital radio broadcasts by the end of 2005. Some services launched exclusively for digital continued to remain available as DVB audio services.

FSR (Finland's Swedish Radio) Mixkanalen: An automated station that broadcast a mixed selection of programming from both Yle Vega and Yle X3M.
(1999–2002): Digital station primarily aimed at young adults, especially women, with domestic and foreign pop and rock music, news and current affairs programming alongside lifestyle talk shows.
(1937–2006): International station on short and medium wave, broadcast in Finnish, Swedish, English, German, French, Russian and a news programme in Latin, . The short and medium-wave broadcasts were discontinued on December 31, 2006. continued on the internet until 2019.
YLE Capital FM: Broadcaster combined parts of Yle World and Yle Mondo (in the capital region and parts in Turku, Lahti and Kuopio).
(formerly Yle Radio Peili) (1998–2024): A news and current affairs channel presenting talk programmes from Yle's other radio and television channels. Also broadcast on digital television.
(2003–2006): Features, political shows, and popular culture programmes for young adults. It replaced Radio Aino. Broadcasting was analogue in Greater Helsinki, digital in southern Finland, and via digital television.

Digital

(): A streaming media platform containing live streams of Yle's radio and television services along with on-demand video and audio content. The platform is available in both Finnish and Swedish (including sign language and audio description) and also has brief newscasts in the Sámi languages, Arabic, English (audio-only), Karelian (audio-only), Russian, and Somali.
(, ): An internet archive of Yle programming dating as far back as 1935.
Yle.fi: Yle's official website, providing news in Finnish, Swedish, Sámi, Karelian, English, Russian, and Ukrainian.

Regional offices

Yle has editorial offices in all regions of Finland except Åland. Sixteen offices operate solely in Finnish, four operate solely in Swedish, four operate in both Finnish and Swedish, and one operates in Finnish and the Sámi languages. There are an additional seven subsidiary branch offices; six operate in Finnish, while one operates in the Sámi languages. Although Åland has no office and is served by Ålands Radio and TV, most of Yle's television and radio services are available there through the Smedsböle Radio Mast.

Finnish-language offices

The Finnish-language editorial offices provide content for Yle's Finnish website as well as for Yle newscasts and current affairs programming broadcast nationally. They also provide regional radio and television content, including newscasts and programme inserts on weekdays for Yle Radio Suomi and ten separate regional weekday newscasts that air during regional variation in the Yle TV1 schedule, with repeats airing nationwide the following morning.

{| class="wikitable sortable"

!Name

!Location

!Coverage area

!Radio service

!Television newscast

|Yle Helsinki

|Helsinki

|Uusimaa

|Yle Radio Suomi Helsinki

| (Yle News Uusimaa)

|Yle Hämeenlinna

|Hämeenlinna

|Kanta-Häme

|Yle Radio Suomi Hämeenlinna

| (Yle News Häme)

|Yle Joensuu

|Joensuu

|North Karelia

|Yle Radio Suomi Joensuu

| (Yle News East Finland)

| rowspan="2" |Yle Jyväsylä

|Jyväskylä

| rowspan="2" |Central Finland

| rowspan="2" |Yle Radio Suomi Jyväsylä

| rowspan="2" | (Yle News Central Finland and South Savo)

|Jämsä

|Yle Kajaani

|Kajaani

|Kainuu

|Yle Radio Suomi Kajaani

| (Yle News North Finland)

|Yle Kokkola

|Kokkola

|Central Ostrobothnia

|Yle Radio Suomi Kokkola

| (Yle News Ostrobothnia)

| rowspan="2" |Yle Kotka

|Kotka

| rowspan="2" |Kymenlaakso

| rowspan="2" |Yle Radio Suomi Kotka

| rowspan="2" | (Yle News Southeast Finland)

|Kouvola

| rowspan="2" |Yle Kuopio

|Kuopio

| rowspan="2" |North Savo

| rowspan="2" |Yle Radio Suomi Kuopio

| rowspan="2" | (Yle News East Finland)

|Varkaus

|Yle Lahti

|Lahti

|Päijät-Häme

|Yle Radio Suomi Lahti

| (Yle News Häme)

|Yle Lappeenranta

|Lappeenranta

|South Karelia

|Yle Radio Suomi Lappeenranta

| (Yle News Southeast Finland)

| rowspan="2" |Yle Mikkeli

|Mikkeli

| rowspan="2" |South Savo

| rowspan="2" |Yle Radio Suomi Mikkeli

| rowspan="2" | (Yle News Central Finland and South Savo)

|Savonlinna

| rowspan="2" |Yle Oulu

|Oulu

| rowspan="2" |North Ostrobothnia

| rowspan="2" |Yle Radio Suomi Oulu

| rowspan="2" | (Yle News North Finland)

|Kuusamo

| rowspan="2" |Yle Pori

|Pori

| rowspan="2" |Satakunta

| rowspan="2" |Yle Radio Suomi Pori

| rowspan="2" | (Yle News Southwest Finland)

|Rauma

| rowspan="4" |Yle Rovaniemi

|Rovaniemi

| rowspan="4" |Lapland

| rowspan="4" |Yle Radio Suomi Rovaniemi

| rowspan="4" | (Yle News Lapland)

|Kemi

|Inari

|Kittilä

|Yle Seinäjoki

|Seinäjoki

|South Ostrobothnia

|Yle Radio Suomi Seinäjoki

| (Yle News Ostrobothnia)

|Yle Tampere

|Tampere

|Pirkanmaa

|Yle Radio Suomi Tampere

| (Yle News Pirkanmaa)

|Yle Turku

|Turku

|Yle Radio Suomi Turku

| (Yle News Southwest Finland)

|Yle Vaasa

|Vaasa

|Ostrobothnia

|Yle Radio Suomi Vaasa

| (Yle News Ostrobothnia)

Swedish-language offices

The Swedish-language editorial offices provide content for Yle's Swedish website along with regional newscasts and programming for Radio Vega on weekdays. Unlike in Finnish, there are no regional television newscasts in Swedish.

{| class="wikitable sortable"

!Name

!Location

!Coverage area The fee was collected per residence and was the same regardless of how many working television sets the residence had. In contrast, during the time that radio receivers required a licence, portable radios and car radios had to have their own licences.

Controversies

During the finlandisation period, Yle contributed to President Urho Kekkonen's policy of "neutrality" by broadcasting the program about the Soviet Union. This program was produced in co-operation with the Soviets and supported Soviet propaganda without criticism.

Eino S. Repo was replaced as director general in 1969 by Erkki Raatikainen, a member of the Social Democratic Party. All directors after him until 2010 were Social Democrats. This was ended by the appointment of the conservative National Coalition Party's Lauri Kivinen as director general in 2010. Kivinen's appointment received much criticism, as he was previously head of Nokia Siemens Networks, which had sold monitoring equipment to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, allowing them to arrest political dissidents throughout the protests in the fall of 2009.

English-language newscaster Kimmo Wilska was fired on 13 October 2010 after pretending to be caught drinking on camera following an alcohol-related news story on Yle News. His stunt was not well-received by Yle's management, which fired him that day. Wilska received substantial support after his termination from the company.

Yle has been criticised for buying many HBO series. It has responded by emphasising the suitability of the HBO series to channels with no ad breaks, citing the programming's quality and low price, and stating that American programmes constitute only 7% of its programming.

Decision to close shortwave

Yle's broadcasts on shortwave radio were ended at the end of 2006. Expatriate organisations had been campaigning for continued service, but their efforts did not succeed in maintaining the service or even in slowing the process. The decision also affected a high-powered medium wave radio station on 963 kHz (312 m). A smaller medium wave station covering the Gulf of Finland region (558 kHz, 538 m) remained on air for one more year.

In November 2005, MP Pertti Hemmilä (N) submitted a question in parliament about Yle's plans to end the availability of shortwave bands internationally. In his question, Hemmilä took up the low cost of the world band radio to the consumer travelling or living abroad. In her response, the Minister of Transport and Communications, Susanna Huovinen (S) noted that Yle would now be available via other means, such as through satellite and the internet. She also underlined the fact that Yle is not under government control, but under indirect parliamentary supervision.

Ylegate 2017

The Council for Mass Media in Finland criticised Yle for restricting news reports about Prime Minister Juha Sipilä's investments and business in 2017. Several reporters were barred by Yle's upper management from publishing news stories about the political connections between Sipilä, the companies owned by his relatives and the state financing of the Talvivaara mine owned by Terrafame.

Notable news anchors

Pietu Heiskanen
Hanna Visala
Marjo Rein, 2014–2025
Kreeta-Maria Kivioja
Matti Rönkä, 1990–2024
Tommy Fränti
Petteri Löppönen
Ilkka Lahti
Mikko Haapanen
Milla Madetoja
Saija Nironen
Tuulia Thynell
Antti Parviala
Jussi-Pekka Rantanen
Arto Nurmi, 1983–2015
Marjukka Havumäki
Piia Pasanen

History

The beginning

From private to public

Entering the digital age

Since 2013

Logo history

Governance

Administrative council

Radio

Finnish language

Sámi languages

Multilingual

Former stations

Digital

Regional offices

Finnish-language offices

Swedish-language offices

Controversies

Decision to close shortwave

Ylegate 2017

Notable news anchors

See also

References

External links