[1] In the spring of 1984, Ingemar Leijonborg and Gunnar Bergvall worked out a business plan for a Swedish commercial TV channel.

It turned out that the project was financially justifiable and they resigned from their jobs, Leijonborg from SVT and Bergvall from Bonnier.

In autumn 1985 the investment company Proventus put up SEK 2.5 million as initial project financing.

They acquired an office for their newly started company called Nordisk Television AB on Birger Jarlsgatan and a secretary.

In 1987 they brought in new investors, Providentia (the Wallenberg sphere), formerly Föreningsbanken, SPP and the book publisher Natur & Kultur were prepared to invest ten million kroner.

The goal was to make an innovative and hipper version of SVT with a heavy newsroom and self-produced series and which would simultaneously become Sweden's largest TV channel.

The next day Expressen wrote in its front cover "Lägg ned TV4 – om det inte blir bättre!"

In order to obtain the concession, there were requirements for local distribution of production and for there to be a wide circle of owners.

On 11 September 1991, Culture Minister Bengt Göransson announced that M3 would be awarded the concession and that the government would make the formal decision the following day.

It was an election campaign and the moderates' party leader Carl Bildt came out and said that a bourgeois government would overturn the decision.

In return for withdrawing their application for Rix TV, they were allowed to enter as a 30 percent owner of Nordisk Television.

In addition, a company, Airtime, was formed, which would manage the sale of advertising in both TV3 and TV4 and in which Kinnevik owned 55 percent.

In July 1993, TV4 terminated the agreement regarding Airtime, and also cut the data connection in a purely physical sense, in order to build up its own sales organization instead.

On 2 December 1991 test broadcasts of TV4 began from Gothenburg (UHF channel 46), Hörby (50), Karlstad (46), Malmö (47), Norrköping (54), Stockholm (42), Sundsvall (50), Uppsala (52), Västerås (51), Örebro (58), Linköping (34), Solna (61), Södertälje/Blombacka (53) and Södertälje/Ragnhildsborg (66).

In 2004, TV4 began transitioning to become a digital-only service, starting by shutting down its analogue satellite signal on 31 March 2004.

[5][6][7] TV4 offers a mix of news, sports, drama series, soaps, entertainment, current affairs programmes, sitcoms, feature films, documentaries and phone-in shows.

After the Nyhetsmorgon ends on weekdays the Efter tio (After ten) starts followed by English spoken TV series up until the news at 7pm.

On Sunday evenings, Swedish-produced television programs are shown until 9pm when they show a movie on Saturday nights.

As a part of its public service obligations, TV4 owns and operates a number of regional and local opt-out stations.

This ended in April 2002 when a new Radio and TV Law came into force, allowing the TV4 Group to interrupt its programmes for advertising, but not to the same extent as TV3 and Kanal 5.

The Radio and TV Law also restricted the amount of advertising that can be shown to ten percent of the programming.