Mreža was the first private Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

n television network

Television network

A television network is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, whereby a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay TV providers. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small...

. It was founded in 1997. From its Zagreb

Zagreb

Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

 studios, it produced original programs that were later aired on various local and regional stations.

The arrival of Mreža was quite a notable event in Croatian media history, because it was the first time the media monopoly of state-owned Croatian Radiotelevision

Croatian Radiotelevision

Croatian Radiotelevision is a Croatian public broadcasting company. It operates several radio and television channels, over a domestic transmitter network as well as satellite...

 (HRT) was significantly challenged. Mreža produced original programs in the form of its own news, but the best remembered are lavishly produced shows. Mreža also poached some important talent from HRT, including Denis Latin

Denis Latin

Denis Latin is a Croatian television host born on 14 February 1966 in Šibenik.He begun to work on HRT in 1987 and two years later, in 1989, he graduated from Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb. In 1990 he became the announcer of Dnevnik, the daily news program on HRT, and with the age of 24 was...

 and his popular Latinica

Latinica

Latinica was a Croatian television talk show launched on November 11, 1993. which was aired Mondays at 20:10 CET on HRT 1.Hosted by Denis Latin, it discusses various current events and its guests are the people who have knowledge or experience about the topic under discussion...

 talk show.

One of the owners of Mreža was the controversial tycoon Miroslav Kutle

Miroslav Kutle

Miroslav Kutle is a Herzegovinian Croat entrepreneur. He became notorious for his involvement in the Croatian privatization controversy and was since sentenced to jail time for embezzlement on two occasions.-Education:...

, and his activities caused the network to fail. Burdened with debts and poor financial management, Mreža disappeared from the Croatian airwaves in 1998, taking a few of the local affiliates with it, including TV Marjan

TV Marjan

TV Marjan is now defunct Croatian commercial TV station from Split, which had the distinction of being the first private television station in former Yugoslavia....

 from Split

Split (city)

Split is a Mediterranean city on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, centered around the ancient Roman Palace of the Emperor Diocletian and its wide port bay. With a population of 178,192 citizens, and a metropolitan area numbering up to 467,899, Split is by far the largest Dalmatian city and...

.