The company was founded in 1984 by Ingemar Leijonborg and Gunnar Bergvall as
Nordisk Television AB ("Nordic Television"). They intended to start a Swedish commercial television channel. It took several years for Leijonborg and Bergvall to find someone willing to invest in their channel, but it was eventually launched on 15 September 1990 as "TV4", broadcasting from the
Tele-X satellite. A Norwegian sister channel,
TV4 Norway, was also launched, but was sold a few years later. At the time, it was clear that the government intended to launch a third terrestrial station and that it would be commercially funded. The two main competitors for the new channel were Nordisk Television and
Kinnevik (owners of
TV3). Eventually it was Nordisk Television who got the license since Kinnevik agreed to withdraw their application. In exchange, Kinnevik bought 30 percent of Nordisk Television and a company called
Airtime AB was set up to sell advertising in TV3 and TV4, giving Kinnevik control of almost all television advertising in Sweden. TV4 could start broadcasting terrestrially in the spring of 1992. Nordisk Television discontinued the Airtime agreement in 1993, a decision followed by years of discussion between Kinnevik and the other owners of the company. Nordisk Television started trading on the
Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1994 and changed its legal name to
TV4 AB. With the terrestrial license followed an obligation to give some airtime to different local companies. This would regularly be owned by the TV4 Group in conjunction with local investors and media companies. With the start of
TV4 Uppland the number of regional stations reached sixteen. Eventually, the TV4 Group started buying local stations and in 2001 they owned all but one,
TV4 Fyrstad, which went bankrupt in 2003. The TV4 Group then merged all regional stations into a single entity,
TV4 Sverige AB. TV4 started broadcasting in the
digital terrestrial television network in 1999. In 2001, the TV4 Group started an experimental interactive channel called
Mediteve using the space on the digital multiplex. In 2003, a general entertainment channel called
TV4 Plus was started. It was followed by
TV4 Film in 2004, and TV400 and
TV4 Fakta in 2005. For several years, the TV channels of the TV4 AB wasn't a part of Kinnevik's digital satellite platform
Viasat. However, in April 2005, TV4 Plus, TV4 Film and TV400 were launched on Viasat (the TV4 Group channel had to wait until 2006 due to contracts with the
Canal Digital platform). In the digital television franchise round of 2006, the TV4 Group applied for three new digital channels, but none of them were given a license. They did however launch two new channels in November 2006:
TV4 Komedi and
TV4 Guld. In May 2006, the TV4 AB bought 51 percent of the sports channel
Sport-Expressen from the newspaper Expressen. The ownership was increased to 66.2 percent in May 2007 and the channel was relaunched as TV4 Sport in September 2007. In November 2006, it was announced that Bonnier and
Proventus would buy the share in the TV4's operating company that was then held by
Schibsted. The deal was approved in December 2006, making the TV4 almost entirely owned by Nordic Broadcasting Oy, a company owned jointly by Bonnier and Proventus. Proventus sold its shares in Nordic Broadcasting to Bonnier in March 2007, making it a fully owned subsidiary of Bonnier. In early 2008, the company adopted its
trade name, (). == Businesses ==