The year begins with an energy crisis and petrol rationing. And there will be parental insurance so that even fathers can stay at home with their children. Cleaners around Sweden are on strike for better conditions. Worry grows for the Swedish tourists in the holiday paradise of Cyprus. That and much more in this column about the year 1974.

På spåret is a popular Swedish TV game show broadcast on SVT since September 5, 1987. The show, which is intended to be humorous yet educational, has remained one of the most popular TV shows in Sweden, attracting an average of 2,150,000 viewers during the 2007 season. The all-time record was set in March 1990, when 3.7 million people tuned in to see the show. This means that nearly every second Swede saw the game show. På spåret is an original format developed by Ingvar Oldsberg for SVT, and he hosted the show for many years. Author and tennis legend Björn Hellberg was promoted from contestant to permanent Oldsberg sidekick in 1995 after winning for four straight seasons. Famous gourmet, restaurant-owner, and former contestant Carl-Jan Grankvist sat in for Hellberg during the 2004 season. In 2009, after 21 years, Oldsberg left and Kristian Luuk took over as the host. Björn Hellberg too decided to leave and was replaced with Fredrik Lindström.

The annual music competition organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television and Sveriges Radio to determine the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest.

The Eurovision Song Contest is an international song competition, organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and featuring participants representing primarily European countries. Each participating country submits an original song to be performed on live television and radio, transmitted to national broadcasters via the EBU's Eurovision and Euroradio networks, with competing countries then casting votes for the other countries' songs to determine the winner.