Serbia’s first and to date only sports channel SOS Kanal has been put up for sale by its owner Dragisa Kovacevic.
Quoting Kovacevic, Cenzolovka and B92 report that the entrepreneur initially planned to close the channel but then decided to dispose of it so that its employees would not find themselves out of work.
He added that there were a number of interested parties in SOS Kanal but refused to provide any details.
Significantly, Radoica Milosavljevic, another entrepreneur, has been cited as one possible buyer.
He in fact founded a company named SOS Kanal Plus on January 8 this year which is based in the same building as SOS Kanal and active in the “production and broadcasting of TV programmes”.
Although Milosavljevic is the sole owner of SOS Kanal Plus, it is registered under the name of Aleksandar Milutinovic, himself the majority owner of TV Apatin.
Milosavljevic acquired a number of media assets in 2015.
SOS Kanal was launched over 20 years ago. In 2006, it was awarded a frequency that it considered faulty, creating interference in its output and resulting in multi-million dollar loses for the company.
It subsequently sued the regulator RATEL and the Republic Broadcasting Agency (RBA) but nothing has to date been resolved.