Television in Serbia was introduced in 1958. It remains the most popular of the media in Serbia—according to 2009 survey, Serbian people watch on average 6 hours of television per day, making it the highest average in Europe.
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Free-to-air terrestrial television
Digital television transition has been completed in 2015 with MPEG-4 compression standard and DVB-T2 standard for signal transmission.
National broadcasting
Serbia has a total of 7 national free-to-air channels, which can be viewed throughout the country. These are RTS1, RTS2 and RTS3 from the country’s public network Radio Television of Serbia, as well as private channels Prva, B92, Pink and Happy TV.
Regional and local broadcasting
There are 28 regional and 74 local television channels. Serbia’s northern province, Vojvodina, has a public broadcaster, Radio Television of Vojvodina. It airs 2 channels throughout Vojvodina – RTV1 and RTV2. Via pay tv services those 2 channels can be viewed throughout Serbia, like many regional broadcasters. One of the largest and most watched regional broadcasters is Studio B, which airs across Belgrade’s metropolitan area.
Pay television
Some 64% of households are provided with pay television services (i.e. 37% cable television, 16% IPTV, and 11% satellite). There are 90 pay television operators (cable, IPTV, DTH), largest of which are SBB (mainly cable) with 47% market share, Telekom Srbija (mts TV) with 25%, followed by PoštaNet with 5%, and Ikom and Kopernikus with 4% each.
Cable television
Some 37% of households in Serbia have cable television. As a result there are many cable television companies, by far the largest of which is SBB. Cable operators offer not only Serbian channels in their packages but also foreign channels - on average there are 90 channels in basic cable packages.
Internet protocol television
About 16% of households have IPTV. First IPTV was successfully launched in 2008 by Telekom Srbija and its IPTV service, called mts TV, is today by far the largest IPTV platform in terms of numbers of subscribers. In 2013 SBB has launched an OTT service called D3i.
Satellite television
There are 11% of households equipped with satellite dishes. Three dominant DTH services are: SBB platform called Total TV, followed by Polaris (owned by Bulgarian Bulsatcom) and Digi TV (owned by Romanian RCS & RDS).
Private channels broadcasting regionally
There are 28 private channels broadcasting with a regional licence. Due to pay television services being widely used across the country, many local and regional channels can be viewed throughout the country.
National pay-tv channels
International pay-tv channels
Viewership
Viewing shares in 2012: