MTV Adria - History of MTV Adria

History of MTV Adria

• The channel launched on September 1, 2005 replacing MTV Europe across the region and beaming its free-to-air signal through Spacecom's AMOS satellites at orbital position 4° West.

• MTV Adria's main headquarters were initially located in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In June 2009, however, MTV began to strengthen its presence within the region by expanding its offices to Zagreb and Belgrade, the latter becoming the station's main headquarters, co-ordinating with MTV Networks Europe in London, Warsaw and Budapest.

• Operations began to be regionalised and divesified especially in Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia, leading to the launch of 3 separate feeds, unofficially known as MTV Croatia, MTV Slovenia and MTV Serbia, which enabled to share the same content, online branding and on-air programming, though with localised subtitles, advertising and sponsorship, making each of them relevant to one of three key markets within the region. The Serbian feed is also available in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. On air, the network has only been referred to as MTV since the relaunch in 2009. Over the 4 months prior to the channel's re-launch, the caption "Adria" was silently removed from logos and programmes (i.e. with "Adria Top 20" being renamed to just "Top 20").

• On August 3, 2009, MTV encrypted its main satellite feed, which had been free-to-air since its launch, becoming therefore available only to pay-TV subscribers and cable customers in the region.

• On September 16, 2009, MTV launched 3 new regional websites, available in Croatian, Slovene and Serbian language, each on its own country's TLD and with almost no mentions of the word Adria. They are known as MTV Hrvatska, MTV Slovenija and MTV Srbija. However, the MTV Adria domain is still active, though now only redirecting to the local websites and using the word "Adria" as an umbrella term that encompasses all of them.

• The 3 feeds continued to share the same on-air programming until the first half of 2011. On August 25, 2011, MTV further split its 3 feeds, not only during commercial breaks, but also programming-wise. For the first time since the channel's launch, different programming can be broadcast across the region. However, at present, the output of the 3 local feeds remains almost identical.