It has been exactly 56 years since Greek television was ‘born’, starting its official operation from the OTE building on 3is Septemvriou St.

It was 23 February 1966 – Wednesday, at 18:30 – when a female figure was broadcast onto the screens of the few television receivers in the city of Athens.

‘Good afternoon. As of today, the National Radio Foundation is introducing its new evening hours for the technical tests of the Experimental TV Transmitter.’ With these words, Eleni Kypreou, the first presenter, announced the start of Greek television.

The signal was broadcast by OTE’s transmitters, in what was at the time the tallest building in Athens.

 OTE’s first “contact” with television had happened.

A short time later, OTE procured a complete TV studio.

Cameras, videos, telecine, monitors, lights, microphones were initially installed in a remote broadcast van and at the OTE Tower in Thessaloniki. And later, on the 10th floor of the YMA, OTE carried out tests and co-productions with the National Radio Foundation.

OTE’s participation in the launching of Television in Greece was important and substantial.

OTE provided know-how, human resources, buildings and machinery, supporting the broadcasting of the first television signal, and it also contributed to the promotion of major events of global interest, such as the historic satellite reception of the transmission of man’s arrival on the moon.

OTE went on to support the distribution of the television signal of state channels to all the major broadcast centres in Greece, doing the same for the first private television channels.

As for OTE’s first studio, it is in the Museum in Nea Kifissia, so it can take everyone back in time, with its cameras and monitors, and bring to life the black-and-white image of that ‘heroic’ era when television took its first steps!  

‘Lights, camera ... action,’ and the show begins at the Telecommunications Museum.