On Wednesday SVT employees were summoned at an emergency meeting where their boss Hanna Stjärne announced the bad news.

Despite savings of SEK 200 million (around €17.2m) already implemented, notably by moving the staff to cheaper premises, extra cutbacks of equal size must be made to lower the media group’s total cost pressure by SEK 400 million (€34.56 m).

As explained by Stjärne, inflation in Sweden has reached a 30-year record high, SVT’s costs linked to its role in civil defence and crisis preparedness in Sweden have risen sharply, alongside TV production inflated budgets. “There has been an extremely rapid cost increase for everything, from rights to programme concepts and personnel,” she said about the challenges in the TV industry, underscoring that some popular programmes have suddenly doubled in production costs.

As a result, the Swedish public service media group will downsize its full-time workforce by 70-80 people, on top of freelancers, increase digitisation and automation, notably in live subtitling, and streamline its various operations.

"It's a tough economic situation in Sweden, with cuts everywhere in our industry. All media houses are under pressure from large cost increases, and of course this also applies to SVT”, argued Stjärne during her internal meeting with SVT staff.

The cuts however will not affect SVT's drama department, according to head of drama Anna Croneman. "Our series deliver both in numbers and in reach," she told us.

SVT's overall savings are expected to be completed by 2025 at the latest.