TVI (Televisão Independente – "Independent Television") is Portugal's fourth terrestrial television channel, launched in 1993. It was the most watched channel in Portugal from 2005 to 2019, and again from 2024 to 2025. It competes directly with SIC and RTP1. It is one of the two private free-to-air channels in Portugal, among the seven terrestrial free-to-air channels broadcasting from the country.

The Catholic Church of Portugal demanded the end of the television monopoly in Portugal and wanted its channel as far back as the early 80s. At the time, there were only two television channels, RTP1 and RTP2, both owned by the state. In October 1981, Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon António Ribeiro demanded the government to authorize the creation of an exclusive television channel for the church, under Article 41-4 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, enabling freedom of education for any religion and the use of media for its activities. The plan for such a channel was greenlighted in January 1982, with consultancy from Luxembourgish television. If a plan to use separate frequencies failed, there was the hypothesis of renting airtime on RTP2. An amendment to the law was passed in February, with the government stressing the church's influence in Portuguese society. Observers of the visit of Pope John Paul II to Portugal planned for May 1982 believed that it was part of the campaign of the Church's bid for a television channel. An interview given by Bishop of Évora Maurílio Gouveia to the Catholic radio station Rádio Renascença believed that a channel owned by the Church was a step towards the creation of a more democratic society, having the right to own a TV channel, just like the right it had to own a radio station and a newspaper.

In 1986, with talks in government to limit government influence in media underway, the idea of a Church-owned channel gained momentum again.

The company was founded on 25 March 1991 by a group of 46 Catholic institutions, companies and businessmen, to receive the license for one of the two slots available for private television, that started in December 1990. It was one of the three shortlisted companies between 2 January and 2 April 1991. It also received support from the RTL Group and wanted to follow the example of the Dutch Catholic omroep KRO and Catholic-backed local television stations in northern Italy. Potential foreign investors were ruled out. By the summer of 1991, it was speculated that TVI would start broadcasting in September 1992. The total cost of operating was of six million contos, against eight million from TV1 and twelve million from SIC.

The project was greenlighted on 6 February 1992, as the fourth channel. The operative functions were divided between Cinema Berna, which housed the news operation, and the Altejo building, for the rest of the teams, both in Lisbon. The channel came out of an old claim (as far back as the 1980s) from the Portuguese Catholic Church, and that its initial aim was of being a "Christian-inspired television channel" with a charter of principles defining it as "a moral and cultural enterprise". When the channel gained its license, the channel had withdrawn from its key characteristic of being "the Church's channel".

Priest Vitor Melícias, who despite having a daily slot on the channel (Encontro), was never aligned with the project, as he preferred that the channel would include what would eventually be called "civil society": religious entities, unions, universities and other institutions. Melícias believed that the project was "utopian" whose limitations were faced further by "pressure from viewers and addictions from the staff".

TVI was the second private Portuguese TV channel to be launched, SIC having been launched five months before, and the fourth channel in all. Already under the name TVI, but marketed as 4, in which the '4' was the sole element in its logo, TVI was initially owned by some prominent Catholic Church institutions, including Rádio Renascença, RFM, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Público, Editorial Verbo and União das Misericórdias; Antena 3 Televisión (which consisted of La Vanguardia, ABC-Prensa Española, Manuel Martín Ferrand (4.3%), Rafael and Manuel Jiménez de Parga, Europa Press and Grupo Zeta), the Luxembourgish Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion, (CLT, now RTL Group), Sonae, the Scandinavian SBS Broadcasting Group and ITV contractor Yorkshire Television were minor stakeholders of TVI. The shareholder structure was also subdivided in many individual personal shareholders. This majority-Catholic ownership pushed TVI's programming in the direction of Christian values. In the first years of its existence, TVI assumed the role of an 'alternative' television broadcaster, dedicating segments of its airtime to distinct target audiences, with part of the morning dedicated to housewives and the elderly and part of the afternoon to the young. Broadcasts were initially experimental, before upgrading to regular status in October the same year.

The first test broadcasts were conducted on 30 January 1993. 40% of the programming output was set to be national, with the remaining 60% being imports.