RadioDays Europe 2025 was held in Athens. What is the shape of the Greek radio landscape?
The national broadcaster ERT (Ellinikí Radiofonía Tileórasi), the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (Ελληνική Ραδιοφωνία Τηλεόραση) began in 1938. It has 21 radio stations and 5 television channels.
As radio listening habits change, the national broadcaster has embraced new platforms to serve its audience.
At RDE25, Irini Giannara, Head of Design and Development at the Radio Program Department of ERT told Steve Ahern about the new initiative ECHO, the national broadcaster’s new audio app.
Echo is an ancient Greek word related to sound. In ancient mythology, ‘Echo’ was a nymph cursed to only be able to repeat the last words spoken to her.
“We have nine radio stations, central radio stations in Athens and in Thessaloniki and 19 regional stations.
“Now we are promoting here our digital platform ECHO. It’s our new digital home. It works on several levels. In their Echo App listeners can find the live streaming of all radio stations. They can also have our content from our radio stations on demand, usually 10 to 15 minutes after the show is broadcast.
“We also broadcast music mixes from our music radio producers and we have unique recordings of our music, for examples our national symphonic orchestra, our contemporary music orchestra…
We also have a drama channel exclusively for ERT. We have a tradition in theatre actually in Greece, so we decided to create a new drama series. We are also designing a very special project that includes children and radio in our new hub for kids.
“[The digital world] is a big challenge because all the national broadcasters across Europe, and of course private radios, are facing a kind of audio aging if we can say. Our audience is getting older and older year by year so the problem is that we have to create and invent in new ways to approach and attract young audiences. Echo is a very special project, it’s a very unique project, a very expensive project, but we are trying to cope with that in a successful and quality way.”
ERT is also active on social media: Facebook | Instagram | X | Tik Tok
Private Commercial Radio came to Greece in 1987. There are now over 900 local commercial stations in Greece, but none are natonal because of licence limitations for commercial broadcasters.
Konstantinos Fotopoulos, the CEO of Audiomax and President of the Association of Private Radio Stations Owners of Attica feels excited about the private radio sector, but is also realistic that, like all commercial radio stations around the world, radio in Athens is suffering a decline in revenue as a share of advertising dollars goes to search and social platforms.
Radio, which is now well extablished in Greek society, has had a turbulent history due to wars and government decisions.
ERT began broadcasting in 1938 as the Radio Broadcasting Service (YRE) from an initial station in Athens. During the WW2 Axis occupation of Greece, the service was renamed the Limited Hellenic Radio Company or AERE. After Liberation, in 1945 the service was reorganized as the National Radio Foundation (EIR) and was expanded to three national radio services as well as international radio services for emigrant Greeks. EIR was one of 23 founding broadcasting organizations of the European Broadcasting Union in 1950.
National government radio was the only licenced service until commercial broadcasters were established in 1987.
In June 2013, the Greek government shocked the nation by announcing that ERT would close by the end of the day with all 2,500 employees sacked and the facilities locked. This resulted in protests and the EBU supported employees who vowed to continue broadcasting online via audio streaming. The courts eventually declared the closure unconstitutional, beginning a slow path to restoring the national broadcasting service. In 2015, the government, under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, restored ERT as Greece’s public broadcaster.
The radio industry celebrated the achievements of a 50 year veteran of the radio industry, Giannis Petridis in a special session at RDE. He has been doing his daily raido show on ERT since it began in 1975.
In that session he recalled that in the 1970s, foreign pop music opened up Greece to new thinking about the world.
“When I started, Greece was a totally different state,” said Petrides.“I played what had never been heard, not because it was forbidden but just because no one was playing it up until then.”
The music gave listeners “food for thought… the music was free and the thought was free… we could hear what was happening elsewhere in the world through the music.”
