Culture is Absent from the Greek state TV. <\/p>\n
“I love documentaries, which constitute collective historical memory, but they have a problem. They are not blockbusters. They don’t generate revenue. They require funding to be produced. However, there are no excessive profits,” said writer Lena Divani in one of the videos<\/a> that are part of Hellasdoc’s ‘O Politismos Apon’ initiative about the disappearance of Greek documentaries on Greek state TV.<\/p>\n On 3 March, Hellas Doc, the Greek Documentary Association, hosted a press conference at ESIEA’s headquarters in Athens. They criticised ERT’s decision to transform ERT 2, a channel associated with documentaries and cultural TV programmes for decades, into a sports TV channel to boost its TV ratings, renaming it “ERT 2 Sport”.<\/p>\n This change pleased many sports fans but angered a significant number of ERT 2’s viewers, while Greek documentary producers saw it as a sign that the future of Greek documentaries was in jeopardy, as there is now little space for such programmes on Greek state TV. ERT 1 focuses on entertainment, and ERT 3 focuses more on regional programmes and… foreign-produced documentaries.<\/p>\n “Documentary is not just an art form; it is a way for a society to understand itself,\u201d documentary producer Fotini Oikonomopoulou said. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cERT is not just a television organisation; it is the national audiovisual archive and the visual memory of society. If today’s reality is not recorded, a historical void<\/a> is created that cannot be filled,\u201d documentary producer and director Marina Danezi spoke at the conference.<\/p>\n \u201cCulture cannot be judged by viewership ratings. It is the responsibility of public television and a fundamental element of its institutional mission,\u201d said <\/span>director Kyriakos Angelakos.<\/p>\n The findings <\/p>\n The Association conducted research on the programming schedules of ERT1 and ERT3 over three months, from November 2025 to January 2026. The findings are alarming: the share of Greek documentaries has decreased, while the share of foreign-produced documentaries has increased.<\/p>\n ERT3<\/p>\n