New media laws of 1986

During the big BSRB strike in the fall of 1984, almost all of RÚV's activities shut down and several illegal radio stations sprung up. As a result, consideration was given to revising the broadcasting laws during the tenure of Minister of Education Ragnhildar Helgadóttir. A new law, which allowed private radio and television stations, was approved by Alþingi on June 13, 1985, and came into effect at the beginning of 1986. Until that time, there had been two radio stations and one television station operating in Iceland, Rás 1 and Rás 2 and Ríkissjónvarpið.

Start of Stöð 2

Stöð 2 went on the air on October 9 that same year as a subscription station with a scrambled program where the subscriber had to buy a code number and enter a video code to unscramble the broadcast. Television presenter Jón Óttar and Vala Matt were prominent on the screen during the first days of the station. The line-up was made up of imported entertainment, dramatized Icelandic entertainment and news. It was difficult to get investors to participate in the activity to begin with. At the beginning of 1987, there were about five thousand subscribers, but by the end of the year there had been almost thirty thousand. At the same time, the number of employees increased and the station began to compete with RÚV for programmers and reporters, which was considered unheard of.

Unification of the brand

Many sister stations were operated under the same company, but in 2008 they were all united under the name of station 2, thus the sports station became Sýn a Stöð 2 Sport. Sirkus became Stöð 2 Extra and Fjölvarpið became Stöð 2 Fjölvarp, on the other hand, Stöð 2 Bíó kept its name.

Icelandic

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Icelandic

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