The Media Sector in Finland

The media sector serves consumers, businesses and public administration. The sector provides products and services for production and distribution of information, opinions and experiences. These pages provide you with information on the media sector and its development.

Typical mass media operators include publishers and producers of printed and electronic content, such as

• the printing industry, whose products include newspapers and periodicals, books and printed advertising material
• electronic mass media produced by  television, radio and internet companies
• recorded media including recordings, videos and motion pictures

Printed media represents currently about 70 per cent of the Finnish mass media market. The share of electronic and recorded media has slowly grown in the past few years. A cultural tradition that emphasises literature and reading is still strong in Finland.

Growing media market

The Finnish mass media market has more than tripled in the last twenty years.  In the past few years the share of mass media has represented about 2,5 per cent of the Finnish gross domestic produce.

Nine hours with the media

The printed media does not have such a high share in how the Finnish consumer spends his/her time as could be expected from the figures of spending money. Finns spend more than nine hours per day with various mass media. Use of the Internet shows the strongest growth.
 
Finns spend time with various mass media as follows (daily average):
• newspapers nearly 40 minutes
• periodicals 20 minutes
• books 25 minutes
• television nearly 3 hours
• radio more than 2 hours
• internet 50 minutes.