Shalimar Television Network (STN) was the first semi governmental television channel of Pakistan, the first to break up the monopoly of state-owned Pakistan Television (PTV). STN started its broadcast in 1990 with the name of People's Television Network (PTN) under the umbrella of Shalimar Recording Company from Islamabad. Later on, its transmissions were started from Karachi, Lahore and by the mid-1990s, it was available in the whole country at terrestrial beam.
STN TV under agreements with CNN International of USA and British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC of UK started CNN Intnational channel and BBC World channel on its terrestrial beam in 1990. CNN Intn'l though dominated the airtime. In the same year, STN in an agreement with Interflow (a private company) started a time slot by the name of , Network Television Marketing (NTM) which came as a breath of fresh air after General Zia-ul-Haq's military dictatorship era of the 1980s, and with its unique and entertainment-filled programmings, it gave tough competition to PTV at prime time evening TV viewing time.
"In 1999, PTV entered the digital satellite television arena and launched PTV World" channel. PTV World channel also started using the same consumer-driven strategy to promote its programs among the people. Due to stiff competition from the new PTV programming, NTM had to quit the airwaves because of the financial crunch. Right after this, STN also ended the slots of CNN Intentional, BBC World and DW. Then under an agreement with PTV Network, the channel became "Channel-3". A Satellite beam was also arranged for STN/Channel-3 and it started its broadcast from PTV Academy. Each rebroadcast station of STN on terrestrial airwaves was connected to the satellite beam of STN/Channel. Channel-3 started its regular transmission in 2001 as an all-purpose channel. Slots of 'Prime Entertainment' program and 'Sunday TV' program were quite popular among the audience as the quality of entertainment programmings were quite good. In 2005, STN/Channel-3 went off the air and the parent company Shalimar Recording and Broadcasting Company signed an agreement with Sports Star International and started the first ever semi-private channel of Pakistan ATV (Pakistan) channel which is successfully continuing its transmission to date.