page_title: Mass media in Serbia
section_title: Television broadcasting
hierarchical_section_title: Mass media in Serbia / Media outlets / Television broadcasting
caption_attribution_description: Српски / srpski: Сједиште Б92 на Новом Београду.
context_page_description: The mass media in Serbia refers to mass media outlets based in Serbia. Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. The Constitution of Serbia guarantees freedom of speech.
  Serbia's media system is under transformation, which is yet "slow, incoherent and incomplete". According to the European Journalism Centre, "democratisation of the media system has failed to become a factor in the democratisation of society as a whole, which was a widespread hope in 2000 based on the achievements of the decade-long struggle against media repression in the Milosevic regime." Serbia ranks 93rd out of 180 countries in the 2020 Press Freedom Index report compiled by Reporters without borders.
context_section_description: Television broadcasting started in 1958 with every country in the former Yugoslavia having its own station. In Serbia, the state television station was known as Television Belgrade (RTB) and became known as Radio Television of Serbia after the breakup of Yugoslavia. The second channel was launched in 1972 and the Third in 1989. Under the Communists and Slobodan Milošević, state broadcasting was controlled by the ruling party. The RTS headquarters were bombed during the NATO action against Yugoslavia. The system developed from a public monopoly, with regional centres (TV Novi Sad, TV Pristina) into a dual, public and private system. The government, while suppressing the development of alternative statewide channels, allowed the broadcasts of regional and local commercial stations (who could profit from unlimited advertisement time to sell), as well as new pro-government local TV outlets. After the fall of Milošević, RTS became known as Nova RTS as an assertion of independence while B92 commenced broadcasting.
  Television remains the most widespread and popular medium in Serbia. According to AGB Nielsen Research in 2009, Serbs on average watch five hours of television per day, making it the highest average in Europe. Television is the main source of news and information for citizens (85%, against 11% for the press and 2% for radio and internet each), while the biggest share of audience goes to entertainment programmes. The financial sustainability of the whole sector remains in doubt, and broadcasters favour cheap and light programmes rather than high-quality in-house productions.
  The TV market in Serbia used to be and still is to some extent saturated. In 2001 there were 253 TV stations and they are more than halved to 109 licenses nowadays. There are seven nationwide free-to-air television channels, with public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) operating three (RTS1, RTS2 and RTS3) and remaining four are private broadcasters: Prva, O2.TV, Pink and Happy TV. Viewing shares for these channels in 2016 were as follows: 19.2% for RTS1, 14.8% for Pink, 9.7% for Prva, 7.9% for Happy TV, 5.8% for B92, and 3.1% for RTS2. There are 28 regional channels and 74 local channels. Besides terrestrial channels there are a dozen Serbian television channels available only on cable or satellite.
  Serbia completed the transition to digital broadcasting in 2015, having chosen MPEG-4 compression standard and DVB-T2 standard for signal transmission.
caption: Old B92 headquarters in Novi Beograd
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