The Greek media market is characterised by excess supply since there are more media outlets than what a small market can sustain. Despite a low readership, in 2016, the country accommodated 280 local, regional, and national daily newspapers. Among them there were fifteen national daily newspapers, four national business newspapers, sixteen national Sunday newspapers, and ten national weekly papers. Geographically, these are mostly located in Athens, which is not surprising since 40 per cent of the country’s population resides in the wider Athens region. The Athenian press has become national in scope, but some regions still prefer local newspapers, albeit as a secondary choice (Papathanassopoulos, 2017b).
Radio is also readily available to all citizens across all regions in Greece. There are over 918 radio stations in Greece, transmitting mostly on the FM band. Most radio stations in Greece are privately owned and are transmitted on a local or regional basis, with the most important stations located in Athens (56 in Attika region) and Thessaloniki (Papathanassopoulos, 2017b).
With regard to the television landscape, private-commercial television dominates, with 120 terrestrial television channels broadcasting on a regional and local level and 8 terrestrial television channels broadcasting on a national level (Papathanassopoulos, 2017b). Satellite pay-TV is also available through Nova, owned by Forthnet Company, and through Cosmote TV of OTE Group, now a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, all offering their services. Streaming television services such as Netflix, Wind Vision, and Vodafone TV are also available to Greek households.
In 2017, pay-TV penetration in Greece was 22 per cent. In 2018, 86 per cent of pay-TV subscriptions were via satellite (DTH), and Internet-based subscriptions (IPTV) were at 14 per cent (Papadimitriou, 2020: 187). The dominance of satellite technology is expected to change with the ever-increasing expansion of high-speed broadband, and especially fibre-to-the-home technology. According to the latest data released by the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT), over the period 2015–2019, there has been a clear shift in consumers’ preference towards IPTV. At the end of June 2019, there were 1.04 million pay-TV subscriptions in general, both via DTH and IPTV, with the greatest boom being given by the latter (Mandravelis, 2020).
More specifically, since June 2015, IPTV has more than doubled its subscribers, from about 85,000 connections to 174,000 connections in three years. During the same period, the share of IPTV, within the total field of pay-TV, increased from 9.1 per cent to 16.7 per cent, as opposed to the share of pay-TV via DTH that underwent a clear decline from 90.9 per cent to 83.3 per cent (Mandravelis, 2020).
Finally, regarding digital media, all national newspapers and television channels offer digital versions in electronic, PDF, and app formats. Most of that content is free of charge; however, there are a few media organisations using paywalls. According to the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report (2020), Internet users in Greece pay for online news only at a rate of 11 per cent (Newman et al., 2020: 72).
