The Board of Directors of the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation YLE has appointed Lauri Kivinen, (photo) Head of Corporate Affairs at Nokia Siemens Networks, as the television group's new Director General.

The 48 year-old Kivinen will be replacing Mikael Jungner who will leave when his five year contract ends on April 30, 2010. According to Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, this will be the first time in 40 years that the public broadcasting company is not managed by a politician from the Social Democratic Party. Kari Neilimo, Chairman of YLE Board of Directors said the process of appointing the group's Director General took about a year.

The Board's idea was to search for ‘a professional manager to successfully lead a modern public service company into the future'. "Lauri Kivinen's broad experience in leading, acquired in the area of communications, as well as his international experience and knowledge about the interest groups were decisive elements in his nomination", said Neilimo.

According to Finnpanel, YLE was the favourite television broadcaster in Finland last year, with a daily TV viewing share (for all age groups over 10 years old) of 43.8%, against 32.1% for MTV and 14.8% for Nelonen Media. YLE TV1 was the second most watched TV station in Finland after MTV3 which had a daily viewing share of 22.8% against 21.9%, for YLE TV1.