More from GlobalPost: Greek TV shutdown prompts outrage
While the government literally cut off newscasters in mid-sentence when it blacked out screens on Tuesday, ERT staff in Athens and Thessaloniki continued broadcasting via a live stream on the Geneva-based European Broadcasting Union website, Ekathimerini reported.
Now, the EBU is taking the live feed of ERT’s news channel NET and retransmitting on a television channel that is available to Greek satellite subscribers, the Guardian reported. The organization is using pre-paid satellite time the ERT purchased before its shutdown.
A senior government official told Ekathimerini that closing the station and firing its 2,600 employees was the only way Athens could meet a EU and IMF goal to reduce Greek state payrolls by about 2,000 workers.
The government said a smaller state station would be launched at the end of August, but protesters who marched outside ERT's headquarters on Thursday – more than 13,000 turned out – said a few months without a state TV station would be bad for democracy.
"Samaras can't tell us what to watch or not,” protester Thanos Lykourias told Ekathimerini. “This isn't about ERT or about its workers any more, it's about democracy and freedom of speech.”
Journalists who have refused to leave ERT headquarters since Tuesday are asking for the station to be switched back on. “We ask the president of the republic to demand from the government to respect the Constitution and stop violating fundamental democratic rights. We ask him to guarantee that the police forces will not invade ERT," a group of employees said in an English language statement released late Thursday, according to the Guardian.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said he was willing to host talks with two junior coalition parties opposed to the shutdown next week
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