Greece has a radio landscape shaped by its cultural history, its Mediterranean geography, and a musical tradition — laiko — that is as distinctive as any popular music form in the world. Greek radio also has a more colourful regulatory history than most European countries, having gone through periods of near-anarchy on the FM dial in the 1980s and 1990s before settling into its current state.
ERT and public broadcasting
The Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) is Greece’s public broadcaster. Its history includes a dramatic shutdown in 2013, when the government of the time closed it overnight as an austerity measure, only for it to be relaunched under a new government in 2015. ERT Radios carries multiple channels including news, music, and culture. The closure and reopening made it briefly one of the most discussed public broadcasters in Europe and raised serious questions about public broadcasting’s vulnerability to political decisions.
Commercial radio
Greek commercial radio expanded dramatically after a 1987 law allowed private stations. The result was chaotic: Athens FM became so crowded that stations interfered with each other, and licencing was erratic for many years. The market eventually consolidated around stations like Antenna Radio, Real FM, and several music-format commercial stations serving Athens, Thessaloniki, and other cities.
Laiko: the heartbeat of Greek radio
Laiko means “of the people” in Greek, and laiko music is exactly that: a melodramatic, string-heavy, emotionally intense popular music with roots in the rebetiko tradition (the blues of urban Greek workers and refugees in the early 20th century). Tsitsanis, Kazantzidis, and more recently Notis Sfakianakis and Sakis Rouvas represent different eras of this tradition. Laiko radio is distinct from Western pop in both sound and emotional register, and it remains the dominant commercial format for older Greek listeners. Younger audiences have moved toward English-language pop, but laiko never left.