The Swedish telco’s restructuring of its TV activities is part of an overall strategy to restore profitability and to adjust to customer behaviour.

Launched on Monday by parent group Telia, the new TV4 Play has now incorporated the content that was available on C More, a brand that has now ceased to exist.

The rebooted TV4 Play offers as earlier independent news reporting, entertainment, high quality drama, but also more films and series, according to the Swedish group.

Users can continue to have access to news and entertainment for free, but a new tier option-the Plus package-offers customers to buy more content, either with advertisement - for a monthly cost of SEK 59, and without ads for SEK 149.

Two other Plus sports packages - comprising the C More sports offers such as UEFA Champions League, SHL - are available, ranging from SEK 399 to SEK 549 per month.

As a bonus, Plus users in Sweden have access to drama and comedy series one week before their premiere on the linear channel TV4.

Matthias Berg, TV4 CEO described the relaunch of TV4 Play as ‘historic’. “With the new TV4 Play, we now gather Sweden on one and the same service where all users can find all our content,” he said.

Among the anticipated Swedish originals programmed for this fall are:

  • Ture Sventon and the Hunt for the Fountain of Youth (Ture Sventon och jakten på Ungdomens källa), season 2 starring again Robert Gustafsson and Helena Bergström (September 3, TV4 Play).
  • Estonia, the event Swedish/Finnish/Estonia disaster series directed by Måns Månsson (October 15 on TV4 Play+, October 30 TV4)
  • Solsidan season 8 (October 1st TV4 Play+, October 15 TV4)
  • Evil, based on Jan Guillou’s classic starring Gustav Skarsgård and Isac Calmroth (November 7 TV4 Play+, November 16 TV4)
  • Heartbeats 2, the romantic drama starring Nora Rios and Simon Edenroth (December 4, TV4 Play+)
  • Beck-Inferno - 49th film in the cult Beck series starring Peter Haber (premiere in December TV4 Play).

Meanwhile, Telia’s Finnish commercial broadcaster MTV has announced that its current loss-making business ‘caused by Covid-19, war in Ukraine, rising inflation and expensive sports rights’ among others, is forcing the group to restructure and slash costs.

At least 45 jobs will be lost, although the entire workforce of approximately 430 people could be affected by the restructuring.

"By renewing the strategy, we make MTV sustainable towards the future. We want to offer the best domestic content experiences and we especially focus on developing the digital experience of consumers and advertiser customers,” said MTV’s CEO Johannes Leppänen.

“Although viewing and consumption of our content is at a great level, MTV's cost efficiency needs to be improved. The changes require us to have new skills, new job descriptions and cost cutting, so negotiations for change are now necessary.”

In a separate statement (CLICK HERE), it was announced that MTV’s long-time Head of Drama and Development -Jani Hartikainen has now moved to Yellow Film & TV as Chief Content Officer.