On the night of June 11, 2013, the screens of Greece went black. Without warning, the government pulled the plug on ERT, the national broadcaster, and laid off its 2,656 employees in a single stroke, casting the move as a strike against decades of waste and political patronage. Critics saw something else: a sacrifice to satisfy the layoff quotas demanded by Greece's international creditors during the depths of the debt crisis. From that abrupt darkness, a new broadcaster was supposed to emerge, leaner and cleaner. Its name was NERIT, and it would not last long.
ERT did not go gently. As transmitters shut down across the country, many employees refused to leave the Broadcasting House in Agia Paraskevi, continuing to stream an internet channel that media outlets across Greece, Cyprus, and Europe carried in solidarity. Within days, ERT's signal flickered back on some analogue frequencies, broadcasting a defiant strike programme. The shutdown rattled the fragile coalition government itself. PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos threatened to walk out, which would have toppled the government and forced new elections, and the political ground shook beneath a decision meant to project decisiveness.
What followed was a long, strange improvisation. After 28 days of black screens, a transitional service crept onto the old ERT frequencies in July 2013, broadcasting vintage Greek films and documentaries pulled from the archives. It cycled through a confusing alphabet of names and logos: EDT, then DT, Dimosia Tileorasi, Public Television. Slowly it grew back its functions, adding live morning news, sports coverage of Formula 1 and the Champions League, and reborn public radio channels. For nearly a year, Greeks watched a public broadcaster that existed in a kind of bureaucratic limbo, neither the old institution nor anything fully new.
The new identity finally arrived on the evening of May 4, 2014. At the start of the evening news, Public Television became NERIT, its logo a letter N styled as a ribbon. The Samaras government had built it, in its own words, from top to bottom, staffed with credentialed employees and funded mainly by a three-euro surcharge tacked onto electricity bills. NERIT spread across television and radio: news channel NERIT1, the sports channel NERIT Sports, a high-definition feed, and radio stations ranging from the classical Third Programme to Kosmos, with its mix of reggae, jazz, and world music. On paper, it was a fresh start.
It never had time to become permanent. The debt crisis that had killed ERT also reshaped Greek politics, and in January 2015 the left-wing Syriza party swept into power. Reopening ERT had been a campaign promise, and the new government under Alexis Tsipras moved quickly to keep it. NERIT's days were numbered. At six in the morning on June 11, 2015, exactly two years to the day after the original blackout, NERIT signed off for the last time. ERT1, ERT2, and ERT HD returned in its place. NERIT had lasted barely thirteen months, a short-lived chapter in a saga about who controls a nation's airwaves, and what it costs to switch them off.
NERIT's broadcasting operations were centered in the eastern Athens suburbs near 38.01°N, 23.83°E, in the Agia Paraskevi and Paiania areas where Greece's public broadcasting facilities are clustered. The nearest airport is Athens International (LGAV), roughly 8 km to the east-southeast. From the air, this is the spreading suburban fringe of greater Athens, set against the foothills of Mount Hymettus to the west; the airport's runways are an easy landmark to the east. Clear Attic skies prevail for most of the year.