The foundation's board consists of 13 politicians, representing the political parties in the Riksdag and appointed by the Swedish government.

[3] The transmitters were owned by the state through Telegrafverket and the press held a monopoly on newscasts through Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå.

[4] In 1956 the Riksdag decided that television broadcasting should continue permanently and on 4 September Radiotjänst initiated official transmissions from the new Nacka transmitter.

[5] The first stage of the main headquarters building and TV studios for Sveriges Television called TV-huset (sv), was inaugurated on Oxenstiernsgatan in the Östermalm district in Stockholm on 30 October 1967.

The completion of the second stage of TV-huset and its official opening was on 5 December 1969, the same day as the start of operations of TV2, making it one of the largest television studios in Europe at that time.

From 1 July 1979, Sveriges Radio AB became the parent company of four subsidiaries: SVT would provide all television broadcasting, except for educational programming which was the responsibility of UR.

TV1 was renamed Kanal 1 and contained almost all programmes produced in Stockholm, while TV2 consisted of the ten regional districts and the Rapport news desk.

The 1990s saw an increase in broadcasting hours, with the addition of reruns in the afternoon, a morning show, and lunchtime news bulletins.

TV3 became the first channel to break SVT's monopoly on television in Sweden and in 1992 the newly elected right-wing parliamentary majority allowed TV4 to start terrestrial broadcasting.

SVT made its first broadcasts in high-definition television during the 2006 FIFA World Cup on a channel operated in co-operation with TV4 AB.

On 25 August 2008, new logos and channel identities were introduced on the network with Barnkanalen renamed SVTB and 24 returning to its former name of SVT24, while SVT1 began carrying Regionala Nyheter (regional news bulletins) for the first time.

In 2018, the Riksdag voted to replace the traditional TV licensing system with a new public service fee based on personal income tax.

The two news programmes had completely separate organisations, meaning a lot of duplicated coverage was provided.

Eventually, Rapport has become the main news programme, and Aktuellt will only broadcast one bulletin per day from autumn 2007.

The main national news bulletins are Rapport, broadcast at 18.00 and 19.30, and Aktuellt which reports in greater depth at 21.00.

SVT provides news programmes in various minority languages: Uutiset in Finnish, Nyhetstecken in Swedish Sign Language, and, in co-operation with NRK and Yle, Ođđasat in Northern Sami, as well as special editions of Sverige idag in Meänkieli and Romani.

[10] There are also regional news bulletins – on SVT1 at 18.33 on Mondays to Fridays and 18.10 on Sundays, as well as 19.55 daily except Saturdays – on SVT2 at 21.46 on Mondays to Thursdays and 21.25 on Fridays In November 2023, SVT joined with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Paper Trail Media [de] and 69 media partners including Distributed Denial of Secrets and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories[11][12] to produce the 'Cyprus Confidential' report on the financial network which supports the regime of Vladimir Putin, mostly with connections to Cyprus, and showed Cyprus to have strong links with high-up figures in the Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned.

[13][14] Government officials including Cyprus president Nikos Christodoulides[15] and European lawmakers[16] began responding to the investigation's findings in less than 24 hours,[17] calling for reforms and launching probes.

[18][19] A survey in 1999 claimed that 33 percent of the journalists working for SVT and SR supported the Left Party, which was about the same proportion as among journalists employed in commercial broadcasting and the print media, but significantly higher than among the general public, only 15 percent of whom supported the Left Party.

[20] It is also worth mentioning that SJF, the organisation amongst whose members the study was partly conducted, is a trade union, which could have skewed the representativity of the sample (lessening the validity of the survey) as it is possible it excluded some rightwing journalists.

The University of Gothenburg also made another study during the Swedish 2006 general election, comparing SVT's news programme Rapport to the country's five largest newspapers.

[21] Entertainment shows on Fridays and Saturdays are, together with popular sports, the programmes that attract the largest audiences.

The eighteen news programmes are: ABC, Blekingenytt, Gävledala, Hallandsnytt, Jämtlandsnytt, Jönköpingsnytt, Mittnytt, Nordnytt, Smålandsnytt, Sydnytt, Tvärsnytt, Uppland, Värmlandsnytt, Västerbottensnytt, Västmanlandsnytt, Västnytt and Östnytt.

Kalles klätterträd ran on Sveriges Television starting in 1975 and grew to become one of the most popular children's programmes of the 1970s.

[10] The only cases in which dubbing is widespread is in programming aimed directly at children who are not expected to have learned reading skills yet.

Thus, many Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Finnish programming air on SVT, while DR, NRK, YLE, KVF and RÚV show Swedish programmes.

Cable networks are required to broadcast four SVT channels for free in either digital or analogue form.

For rights reasons, SVT World does not show acquired material, such as movies, sports, or English language programming.

The chairman of the Board is Lars Engqvist, deputy Prime Minister of the previous Social Democratic government.

Since the arrival of commercial television, SVT's combined viewing share has declined steadily and digital channels have also provided competition.