Hi Paul
Looking at Boxers home page (http://www.boxer.se) which is not available in english, I can read that the Government accepts channels to distribute, but they do it more or less on a commercial ground. They know that Boxers competing with the other commercial networks – being cables or satellite. With the relatively smaller space given by the terrestrial bandwidth limitations, the channels chosen are the most wanted and viewed.
The government also tries to apply rules to the channels “broadcasted from Swedish territory”. I.e. no commercials for tobacco, alcohol or commercials aimed directly to minors. This rule has had the effect that some Swedish spoken channels are broadcasted from abroad, like Great Britain who has more “tolerant” commercial rules. Foreign channels are free to broadcast whatever commercials allowed in the country the channel are broadcasted from originally.
Here’s a link to Boxers page describing what channels they distribute - http://www.boxer.se/?page=1246. One shouldn’t compare Boxers network in Sweden with nation wide networks in the USA, since there is only some 9 million people in Sweden. This makes it easier to control in one way, and that is what the government tries to do. We haven’t yet seen the effects of letting other operators into the network in competition with Boxer. Future will tell!
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Mikael Olsson