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.[1]
Digital television transition has been completed in 2015 with MPEG-4 compression standard and DVB-T2 standard for signal transmission.[2] [3]
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 TV2, Prva, B92, Pink and Happy. These free-to-air channels require a subscription, which is paid via the electricity bill.
There are 28 regional and 74 local television channels.[4] 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.
Some 67% of households are provided with pay television services (i.e. 38.7% cable television, 16.9% IPTV, and 10.4% satellite).[5] There are 90 pay television operators (cable, IPTV, DTH), largest of which are SBB (mainly cable) with 48% market share, Telekom Srbija (mts TV) with 25%, followed by PoštaNet with 5%, and Ikom and Kopernikus with 4% and 3%, respectively.
Nearly 39% of households in Serbia have cable television. As a result there are many cable television companies, by far the largest of which is SBB.[6] Cable operators offer not only Serbian channels in their packages but also foreign channels - on average there are 90 channels in basic cable packages.
About 17% 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.
There are 10.4% 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).
| Channel | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| First television channel in Serbia launched on 23 August 1958 as Televizija Beograd or TVB (Television Belgrade). | ||
| First colour channel in Serbia launched on the last day of 1971 as Televizija Beograd 2 (TVB2). | ||
| Channel began broadcasting on 26 November 2008 in DVB-T format in Belgrade and Novi Sad area, since 21 March 2012 it was available across Serbia over trial DVB-T2 network. |
| Channel | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| Launched on October 6, 2000. From 2017 to 2020, it was rebranded as O2.TV. | ||
| Happy | Happy is Serbia's youngest national broadcaster, launched on September 27, 2010. | |
| RTV Pink launched on September 16, 1994 at 8pm. It has since become significant media group which owns several television networks across the Balkans. | ||
| Prva | Prva launched on December 31, 2006 at 7pm as FOX. It is part of Greek Antenna Group since December 2009. On September 20, 2010 at 6pm it changed its name to Prva. |
| Channel | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| First launched as Radio Television Novi Sad (RTNS 1) the network was renamed to Radio Television of Vojvodina in 2006. It is broadcast across Serbia's province of Vojvodina. It can also be seen throughout Serbia via pay television services. | ||
| RTV 2 caters mostly for the minority groups living in the Serbian province of Vojvodina with a large number of foreign language content. It can only be seen in Vojvodina and is not broadcast via pay television services to the rest of Serbia. |
There are 27 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.[7]
| Channel | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| Regionalna TV | Airs from Novi Pazar | |
| SAT TV | Airs from Požarevac | |
| TV Banat | Airs from Vršac | |
| TV Belle Amie | Airs from Niš | |
| TV Bor | Airs from Bor | |
| TV Enigma | Airs from Prijepolje | |
| Info Kanal | Airs from Subotica | |
| TV K23 | Airs from Subotica | |
| TV Kanal 9 | Airs from Kragujevac | |
| TV Kikinda | Airs from Kikinda | |
| RTV Kragujevac | Airs from Kragujevac | |
| TV Kraljevo | Airs from Kraljevo | |
| TV Kruševac | Airs from Kruševac | |
| TV Leskovac | Airs from Leskovac | |
| TV Lav plus | Airs from Užice | |
| TV Most | Airs from Novi Sad | |
| TV Palma Plus | Airs from Jagodina | |
| TV Panonija | Airs from Novi Sad | |
| Pannon RTV | Airs from Subotica | |
| TV Pirot | Airs from Pirot | |
| TV Podrinje | Airs from Loznica | |
| TV Raška | Airs from Raška | |
| TV Santos | Airs from Zrenjanin | |
| TV Studio MT | Airs from Leskovac | |
| Sremska TV | Airs from Šid | |
| Airs from Belgrade | ||
| Airs from Šabac | ||
| TV Vranje | Airs from Vranje | |
| TV Vujić | Airs from Valjevo | |
| TV YU Eco | Airs from Subotica | |
| RTV Trstenik | Airs from Trstenik |
Following is table of viewership for 7 national free-to-air channels:
| Audience share % (4+)[8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Channel | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
| 19.5 | 20.1 | 22.4 | 27.4 | 26.5 | 26.2 | 26.0 | 25.1 | 23.6 | 23.6 | 19.9 | 21.7 | 18.5 | 19.2 | 20.2 | 19.4 | 19.3 | 18.4 | 17.6 | 17.5 | 16.3 | ||
| 7.4 | 8.2 | 6.3 | 6.7 | 6.8 | 7.6 | 5.7 | 4.6 | 4.2 | 3.6 | 3.0 | 3.1 | 2.3 | 3.1 | 2.5 | 1.9 | 1.6 | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.0 | 1.0 | ||
| 21.9 | 20.0 | 22.5 | 23.3 | 23.5 | 21.7 | 23.7 | 25.6 | 20.4 | 19.7 | 21.4 | 19.0 | 15.8 | 14.8 | 14.1 | 16.7 | 17.6 | 17.2 | 16.9 | 16.4 | 15.7 | ||
| 4.7 | 6.4 | 7.8 | 10.6 | 15.1 | 16.1 | 16.0 | 13.2 | 10.7 | 9.7 | 9.0 | 10.9 | 10.5 | 11.7 | 10.7 | 10.0 | 8.1 | ||||||
| 3.4 | 5.3 | 6.8 | 9.1 | 9.3 | 8.7 | 8.0 | 6.3 | 7.6 | 8.2 | 7.7 | 7.3 | 6.8 | 5.8 | 4.7 | 4.6 | 4.1 | 3.5 | 3.0 | 2.5 | 2.2 | ||
| 5.4 | 4.3 | 2.8 | 4.1 | 4.7 | 9.8 | 7.9 | 9.4 | 8.3 | 6.9 | 6.8 | 7.8 | 7.9 | 7.5 | |||||||||