Greece: National Broadcaster ERT stormed by internal disputes; CEO and Deputy Chief Executive officer to resign.
Rapid developments in the last days are taking the Greek national broadcaster(ERT) by storm as State Secretary for Digital Policy,Telecommunications and Information, has asked ERT’s CEO , Vasilis Kostopoulos and Deputy Chief Executive officer, Giorgos Thalassinos, to resign.
The ongoing dispute between the two executives (Kostopoulos and Thalassinos) was the drop that overflowed the glass. Their continuous comflicts have become an obstacle to their cooperation, development that caused the State Secretary’s reaction by asking their resignitions and launching the process for replacing both of them.
According to newsit.gr, the decision for ERT’s administrative changes was determined during Siriza’s Political Secretariatn meeting under the presence of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras himself. During the meeting it was asked from the Minister of Digital Policy, Nikos Pappas, State Secretary for Digital Policy, Lefteris Kretsos and Parliament’s vice president, Tasia Christodulopoulou to inform the party’s Political Secretariat about the session of the Committee on Institution and Transparency, where Mr. Kostopoulos had testified.
The cause of evil
According to the facts, these new storm in ERT’s administrative status comes after the ongoing dispute between Mr. Kostopoulos and Thalassinos. The latest development that aggravated things was an e mail sent to all ERT’s employees by Mr. Thalassinos revealing what took place in ERT’s board meeting on October 25, accusing directly CEO Vasilis Kostopoulos, to receive an equally rowdy response by the broadcaster’s CEO.
V.Kostopoulos was appointed CEO of the Greek broadcaster on 26 July 2017 while G. Thalassinos is Deputy Chief officer since August 8 2018. This will be the third change of CEO in a three year period urged by the goverment to avoid the worst for the national broadcaster.
All this latest developments come at a time when the national broadcaster hasn’t announced any details concerning the country’s Eurovision participation and the process it will follow to determine the Greek Eurovision 2019 entry.
