Founded by
Cem Uzan and
Ahmet Özal on 1 March 1989 as Magic Box Incorporated, Star TV is Turkey's first private TV channel. At the time, Turkey had a strict television monopoly law which established TRT as the sole provider of terrestrial television. The company was registered in Liechtenstein, with a capital of 500,000 Swiss francs. To circumvent these problems, Magic Box began negotiations in
West Germany on 3 August 1989. The company rented with
Eutelsat to deliver its signals on 7 February 1990 and signed an agreement with German commercial channel
Sat.1 to use its studios and infrastructure to operate. Star 1's success on the quick-fast was due to the views public opinion had of the state broadcaster at the time, with 60% favoring Star 1 over 40% favoring TRT's network of channels. TMSF put Star TV up for auction, and it's purchased by Isil Television Broadcasting Corp. of
Doğan Media Group, which offered the highest bid of $306.5 m at the auction in September 2005. Star TV was sold by
Doğan Holding to the
Doğuş Media Group on 17 October 2011, for $327m. The new management adopted a new logo, replacing the previous S logo with a new, colorful logo featuring a white star in the center, introduced on 1 January 2012. The new logo was developed in
Argentina. In late December 2011, the new logo was already placed inside Doğuş Group's building. == Programs ==