On 22 September 2010, after months of speculation,[3] the Qatari government-endowed Al Jazeera Media Network announced the US$1.56 million[4] purchase of NTV 99, a local channel based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

[4] Soon after the purchase announcement, Al Jazeera made a lease agreement with BBI Real Estate regarding the usage of the 800m2 space at the top floors of Sarajevo's ARIA Centar.

[7] With the Slobodna Bosna newsmagazine reporting Al Jazeera Balkans offering minimum monthly salaries in excess of €1,000 as well as 5-year term contracts,[8][9] the run on the station by interested local journalists was sizable.

It began looking at Croatian state broadcaster HRT's personnel in this regard with Aleksandar Stanković, Denis Latin, and Goran Milić being mentioned as potential transfer targets.

Other established names being bandied about were additional Yutel veterans such as Zekerijah Smajić and Ivica Puljić, as well as former HRT and Nova TV personality Mirjana Hrga, and Arijana Saračević-Helać from Federalna televizija.

[17] The approach was confirmed by TV Avala's general manager Bojana Lekić, receiving significant coverage in the Serbian media, especially after information appeared about the Al Jazeera Balkans job interview process including a question about the status of Kosovo.

The network's visual appearance is mainly based on that of its English-language counterpart, in which this style lasted until 1 February 2015, when the channel adopted a new graphics package that looks similar to Al Jazeera America.

The station has reporters in based in Washington, D.C., London, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Istanbul and Jerusalem by utilizing the resources of the current Al Jazeera bureaus around the world.

With the September 2010 announcement of Qatar Media Corporation buying NTV 99 with a view of turning it into a Balkans-wide news channel, Boro Kontić, head of the Open Society-funded journalist training facility Mediacenter in Sarajevo, likened the arrival of the Arab media conglomerate to the atmosphere before the start of the Bosnian War, when it was announced that Sarajevo was to become regional headquarters for the European TV channel Euronews: "People aren't afraid of a new war, exactly, but rather political upheaval.

[7] The June 2011 revelation of Al Jazeera Balkans asking its job applicants to state their personal position/opinion regarding the international status of Kosovo with the answer potentially determining whether they get hired or not while at the same time making a takeover bid for Serbian nationwide television network TV Avala caused a lot of reaction in the country.

Slobodan Reljić, former editor-in-chief at the NIN magazine conveyed that he's not particularly shocked at the way Al Jazeera Balkans picks its staff because contemporary global media outlets have given up on objective journalism.

[23] Olivera Kovačević, RTS television host, touched on the issue of potential Al Jazeera Balkans journalists from Serbia having to disregard their own country's constitution if the station's hiring criterion is to treat Kosovo as an independent state: "The very act of asking that question during a job interview – thereby interrogating an applicant on his/her political orientation – is in breach of that person's human rights.

[24] The Spectator's Fraser Nelson views Al Jazeera's arrival to the Balkans through the lens of the ongoing global "information war" and the Western media's current standing in that showdown.

Right after mentioning that "news broadcasts from Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Belgrade and Zagreb are all utterly different", Judah claims Al Jazeera Balkans faces the problem of "many Serbs and Croats assuming it is "Muslim" television".

Schwartz concludes that "in entering the Balkans, Al Jazeera has opted for an attempted revival of a long-shattered Yugoslav cultural unity, combined with a gambit for greater Islamist influence", but also warns that "its decision comes at a bad time for the region, with Wahhabi radicals agitating across Balkan borders, and the neo-fundamentalist Turkish regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan bidding for revived prestige in the former Ottoman provinces in Europe".

As for the network's financial prospects, Schwartz expresses doubts "that evocation of the long-gone, artificial nationality of the former Yugoslavia will make Al Jazeera’s investment in the Balkans profitable" though offers a possibility of "corrupt politicians dominating the ex-Yugoslav successor states finding it lucrative to have connections to Gulf petrobillionaires".