Television in Serbia was introduced in 1958. It remains the most popular of the media in SerbiaâÂÂaccording to 2009 survey, Serbian people watch on average 6 hours of television per day, making it the highest average in Europe.
Digital television transition has been completed in 2015 with MPEG-4 compression standard and DVB-T2 standard for signal transmission.
Serbia has a total of 7 national free-to-air channels, which can be viewed throughout the country. These are RTS 1, RTS 2 and RTS 3 from the countryâÂÂs public network Radio Television of Serbia, as well as private channels Prva, B92, Pink and Happy.
There are 28 regional and 74 local television channels. SerbiaâÂÂs northern province, Vojvodina, has a public broadcaster, Radio Television of Vojvodina. It airs 2 channels throughout Vojvodina â 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). 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 Poà ¡taNet 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. 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).
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.
Following is table of viewership for 7 national free-to-air channels: