Prva (; ) or Prva Srpska Televizija (), is a Serbian commercial television network with national coverage.
Launched on 31 December 2006 at 7 pm as Fox Televizija, the network has from December 2009 until December 2018 been owned by the Greek media company Antenna Group.
From its inception until December 2009, it was majority-owned by the global media conglomerate News Corporation, which attached its Fox brand to the operation, naming Dan Bates as the CEO. During its time under News Corporation, Fox televizija closely co-operated with News Corporation owned networks in neighbouring countries such as bTV in Bulgaria and Fox Turkey, sharing production capabilities on specific projects and making use of their experiences. Though quickly establishing itself on the Serbian television market and improving its viewership stake year after year, Fox televizija was a money-losing operation, posting an annual loss both in 2007 and 2008. By August 2009, major restructuring was initiated at the network with 60% of its news division staff being laid off in preparation for the network sale that occurred several months later.
Following the December 2009 sale of Fox televizija to Antenna Group and a transitional period of several months during which Bates continued as CEO, the job was handed over to Dejan Jocić in March 2010 though the Fox televizija name continued to be used until the start of the next television season on 18 September 2010, when the network was re-branded as Prva srpska televizija or Prva. Jocić, a German-born Serb and former ProSieben managing director, presided over Prva's expansion into the Montenegrin television market with the August 2012 establishment of its sister channel – Prva TV Crna Gora.
Three years later, on 16 April 2013, the network's editor-in-chief Dragan Nenadović was prompted to the position of Prva's CEO.
History
Fox televizija
News Corp was one of the five commercial groups that won the national broadcasting license in Serbia at a public tender organized by Serbian Broadcasting Agency in April 2006. In doing so, they beat out stiff competition from German RTL Group that also wanted to start a Serbian operation. News Corp named Dan Bates, an experienced television executive to be the CEO of its upstart Serbian operation.
Some three months later on 6 September 2006, an entity named Fox televizija started broadcasting a test signal consisting only of the superimposed Fox logo. Three days later on 9 September 2006 at precisely 8 pm, they played their first actual moving picture programme – a nature documentary that lasted some 45 minutes – before reverting to the Fox logo test signal. The exact same setup (test signal most of the day with a single taped programme at 8 pm) continued over the following ten days or so. Their primetime lineup was then somewhat expanded with a few Latin telenovelas, an occasional feature film, and a weekly ULEB Cup basketball game featuring Serbian teams (the basketball broadcasts were their first in-house productions). During daytime hours, they played a test signal, old episodes of canceled Croatian talk-show Sanja, and music videos. On 5 December 2006, before the ULEB Cup match featuring Red Star Belgrade vs PAOK basketball teams, a riot broke out between two sets of fans in Pionir Hall and the footage shot by Fox televizija was shown across the world.
On 22 December 2006, Fox televizija aired its first news programme featuring live reports from Belgrade's Republic Square during the decorative tree lighting ceremonies. Then on 31 December at 7 pm, Fox televizija finally launched officially with a live-to-air broadcast called Fox stiže as part of their newscast Fox Danas hosted that day by Zoran Baranac and Jovana Jakić. Amongst other things, the programme featured News Corp's chairman Rupert Murdoch wishing the citizens of Serbia a Happy New Year 2007 and an unsuccessful attempt to link up with Fox News' studio in Baghdad via satellite.
During its initial period of official broadcasting, Fox televizija's entertainment programming mostly relied on old and inexpensive American sitcoms, dramas, and soaps such as The Bold and the Beautiful, ALF, Hollywood Safari, El Cuerpo del Deseo, Police Academy, with One Tree Hill, Cold Case, and The Amazing Race being the only possible exceptions to the 'cheap & old' rule. As far as locally produced content, in addition to the evening newscast Fox Danas at 7 pm and the nightly one Fox Fokus at 10 pm, Fox's news division covered the Serbian parliamentary elections on 21 January 2007 with a one-off programme Ubedi pobedi hosted by news division head Tanja Vidojević.