Continuity (broadcasting) - Continuity Around The World - Sweden

Sweden

In Sweden, a continuity announcer (or programme presenter) is informally known as a hallåa, which roughly means "helloer". This comes from the early days of radio when the main station in Stockholm contacted the other stations around the country by calling "hallå, hallå". Continuity announcers have been present on Swedish public television since November 1957. Initially, Sveriges Radio employed a team of both male and female announcers, but in the 1960s, the announcers became almost solely female. Male announcers returned in the 1970s.

Both Kanal 1 and TV2, as well as the educational television service UR, continued to use in-vision announcers from the 1970s through to the 1990s, except for a few years in the early nineties when Kanal 1 (now SVT1) switched to out-of-vision continuity. In a cost-cutting exercise, SVT decided to drop live in-vision announcing from SVT2 in January 2005 and introduced pre-recorded voice-overs by SVT's announcing staff. The educational broadcaster UR dropped in-vision announcers by the end of 2006. A further review of SVT presentation led to the end of in-vision continuity on SVT1 on Sunday 4 March 2012. All SVT stations now use out-of-vision announcers.

The largest commercial channel, TV4 has utilised in-vision announcers since it began broadcasting in 1990. Most other commercial channels broadcast from London and use out-of-vision announcers. Private channels with out-of-vision announcers include TV3, Kanal 5, TV6, Kanal 9 and TV4 Plus.