Panagiota Fotou is so fed up with bad news on Greek free television that she’s willing to pay for programs that help her forget about her country’s economic woes, as she stated at Bloomberg report.
“People are tired of crisis-related bulletins,” says Fotou, flicking through channels at her Athens apartment. “Pay- TV may be an extra expense, but the special deals are tempting.”
Meanwhile, viewers such as Panagiota Fotou are looking for pay-TV subscriptions that are both inexpensive and of good quality. “I can’t stand the traditional Greek TV shows,” says Fotou, holding her two-year-old son in her arms. “They are full of ridiculous people, half-naked women and can’t even make you laugh. Pay-TV gives you the option to choose what you’re going to see and where you’re going to see it. On your TV, laptop, tablet or mobile.”
The Greek economic crisis has boosted demand for more specialized, on-demand TV products, George Pleios, a communications professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg on July 11.
“Instead of going out to watch a soccer game at a cafe, we gather at home, cook and bring our own beer,” said Tasos Prigkouris, a 39-year-old self-employed subscriber of both Forthnet and Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA (OTE) pay-TV services. “It’s a lot cheaper than going out and the deals that providers offer these days make it a lot easier.”
The economic crisis, which has cost Greece a quarter of its gross domestic product, “has greatly reduced the consumption potential of Greeks, including outdoor cultural products, visits to theaters, cinemas, even travel,” he said. At the same time, “bad quality programs of free TV stations and the shutdown of the state broadcaster led to a general depreciation of the TV field.”
Greeks like Fotou are contributing to what the country’s two biggest telecom service providers OTE and Forthnet say is a doubling of subscribers to combined TV and online packages in the past two years. The increase comes even as unemployment climbed to 27 percent and retail sales plunged for a fourth consecutive year.
The number of Greek pay-TV subscribers stands at 760,000, up from about 300,000 at the end of 2012, according to estimates by OTE and Forthnet. This gives a market penetration of 19.5 percent, after it had been stuck at between 11 percent to 13 percent for nearly 10 years.
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