MTV3

MTV3 (Finnish: MTV Kolme; Swedish: MTV Tre) is a Finnish commercial television station owned by Bonnier. It had the biggest audience share of all Finnish TV channels until Finnish Broadcasting Company’s Yle TV1 took the lead. The letters MTV stand for Mainos-TV (advertisement television), due to the channel getting its revenue from running commercials. Number 3 was added later, when the channel was allocated the third nationwide television channel and it generally became known as "Channel Three" – Finnish Broadcasting Company’s Yle TV1 and Yle TV2 being the first two – and also to distinguishing it from the later MTV Finland. The channel's logo was a stylized owl, changed to an owl's eye after an image renewal in 2003. MTV3 currently has about 500 employees. It is also known as Maikkari (a slang of word "Mainos-TV").

History

MTV3 started on 13 August 1957, the first commercial television network in Finland, and one of the earliest nationwide commercial TV stations in Europe. In Finland it was preceded by the regional TES-TV commercial channel. It was originally known as MTV with programmes broadcast on the two channels of Yle. MTV was allocated its own channel after 1986, when Kolmoskanava (TV3) was born as a joint venture between Yle, MTV, and Nokia. MTV3 was born in 1993 when MTV took over the shares of TV3 from Yle and Nokia and MTV programming switched from the Yle frequencies to the TV3 transmitters. The same year MTV Oy was admitted as a full active member of the European Broadcasting Union.