Yle

Yleisradio (Finnish) or Rundradion (Swedish), abbreviated to Yle (pronounced /yle/), is Finland's national public-broadcasting company, founded in 1926. Yleisradio's organization shares many of the characteristics of its British counterpart, the BBC, on which it was largely modelled. It employs around 3,200 people in Finland.

Yle is a public limited company, owned by the Finnish state (with a 99.98% share). It is funded primarily (90%) through a television licence fee – the cost of which, fixed by the Finnish Government, is between €208.15 and €215.4 per household per year – as well as from private television broadcasting licence revenues. Yle has a status that could be described as that of a non-departmental public body. It is governed by a parliamentary governing council. Yle's turnover in 2006 was 383.5 million euro.

Yle operates four national television channels, 13 radio channels and services, and 25 regional radio stations. Finland being an officially bilingual country — around 5.5% of the population have Swedish as their mother-tongue — Yle provides radio and TV programming in Swedish through a department called Svenska Yle. As is customary in Finnish television and cinemas, foreign films and shows are generally subtitled on Yle's channels. Dubbing is used in cartoons intended for young children who have not yet learned to read, as well as many nature and history documentaries ("to avoid spoiling beautiful pictures").

In the field of international broadcasting, one of Yle's best known services is Nuntii Latini, the news in Latin, which is broadcast worldwide and made available over the Internet. Yle was also one of 23 founding broadcasting organisations of the European Broadcasting Union in 1950. Yle hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 in Helsinki, Finland.