10/18/00

Like in the U.S., there are broadcast, cable and satellite TV services available in Spain. But where we live there's no cable service. (Hell, we don't even have a telephone line!)

The European PAL broadcast system is not compatible with American NTSC TV hardware. There are dual-system TV receivers and VCRs sold here, though.

Program schedules appear in the daily papers and in weekly newspaper supplements. The published schedules for the broadcast channels are only approximations. Programs may start earlier or later than the scheduled times. Or they might not be shown at all.

Commercials here are just as frequent and just as annoying as they are anywhere else. But regular news programing is a welcome exception. Here, they don't interrupt the news after each story for commercials.

As you might expect, there are hardly any English-language programs available on broadcast TV - just an occasional movie with Spanish subtitles. If you want more than that you need a satellite dish. Either way, if you feel like you've been watching too much TV, you ought to be able to budget your time better here.

We get five free broadcast channels. Two are owned by the Spanish government, two are commercial, nation-wide channels, and the fifth is a regional (Galician) station. There's also a subscription channel but we don't subscribe. The subscription channel broadcasts a few unscrambled programs during the day.

The regional channel and one of the government channels show English-language movies with Spanish subtitles every once in a while. The rest is either in Spanish or in the Gallego language.

When we first arrived here, the subscription channel aired (unencoded) ABC News on weekday evenings. They later dropped that and showed CNN-International in English for a while before switching to the Spanish version. Now there is no news being broadcast in English.

There are a few American programs, mainly sitcoms, shown with Spanish dubbing. There are some Spanish sitcoms and cop shows that are imitations of U.S. programs, including that annoying "canned laughter". Spain is also currently producing versions of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" and "Big Brother". (These two may have run their course by the time you read this.)

For foreigners like me, the most enjoyable broadcasts are music and variety shows, which feature some first-rate performers, many of whom are still relatively unknown.

DIGITAL TV (Jan 08)
Digital broadcast TV started here a while back and there are around 20 channels (supposedly) available in our local area. (We can't verify the number because we're using satellite TV.) There are some low-lying areas near us who can't get good reception of any broadcast TV, digital or analog.

Low-cost digital receivers that adapt older TV sets are becoming more and more popular but digital TV sets are available for those who want them.

The government says that the cut-off date for the old analog TV broadcasts is 3 April 2010, about 14 months after the USofA goes all-digital. Given their past lack of planning in other areas, a delay of Spain's cut-off date wouldn't be a big surprise.

Dec 03 Update
Until this Fall, there were two satellite TV services, both using those little 18-inch dishes. We subscribed to the one that was not affiliated with Telefónica (ptooie!). Now the two services have merged into one, and there is no longer any competition. The programming is similar to what we had before but, naturally, the price has gone up.

We receive our signals from the Astra satellites that serve quite a few European countries. Our receiver came with a little credit-card-size plug-in gadget that limits what we have access to. There are dozens of subscription channels that we don't get.

ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PROGRAMS -Several channels are available. (The rest are in Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Polish, etc.)

News programs are available from CNN-International, Fox News, MSNBC, Euronews, BBC and the British SKY News. But for most of the day, CNN and MSNBC carry business-related programming.

From about 11:00 PM through the wee hours of the morning (local time), MSNBC shows U.S. programming like NBC Nightly News, The McLaughlin Group, Dateline, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. And after midnight, SKY News shows CBS News with (whoever).

MOVIES - We subscribe (at extra cost) to several channels of movies. Most are American movies and many of them come with the original English-language sound track. Each channel has an optional sound track that can be used for the original sound but for some reason they often have Spanish on both of them.

And there are over a dozen pay-per-view channels that show the latest video releases. To get access to these you have to connect your satellite receiver to you telephone line. The charges are added to your monthly bill. (We don't use this feature.)