Foreign TV

[admylin]

We have the standard german cable TV with around 34 channels and there is absoloutly nothing on! Is TV such rubbish where you are? Roll on the kids summer holidays starting then we will be on the first plane to the UK and decent TV!

it's a bag of Shte, Australian terrestrial tv, absolute utter Sh&e.
Boston SVU, Nebraska CIK, Miami UTI all that bollocks and the ads! Criminally unsophisticated it would me weep with laughter if they weren't on 5 times an hour. The Australian Broadcasting Company is reasonabley informative and entertaining and SBS shows a lot of ethnic programming but on the whole it is pitiful.
We have Foxtel basic and that's mainly rubbish, we end up watching the two UKTV channels.

Let's hear a rousing chorus of HUZZAH! for the people who invented television, the originators and the keepers of the highest standrards; The BBC!!!!!!!

ha ha ha suzy - dh hates the Ads - I said it is only cause he was not force fed them as a child - he would not even register them. I seem to not notice how many there are. Having said that - I could not believe and did not know one had to pay a TV licence in the UK - I was merrily watching tv etc when informed after a number of months that I needed a licence.

We have a bit more than the basic foxtel. We tend to watch that a bit - various channels.

CF - I was gobsmacked that a football final would take hours and hours - as they stopped for the TV ads?!?!? couldn't let the viewing public miss any superbowl whilst they got their trillion dollar ads in........

Funnily suzy -w e tend to watch a lot of the UK shows that make it here - want some to come back. Dh is missing Doc Martin?!?!? I want wire in the blood and that cold case one.....

Hmm, I think the telly here is ok. Not very many channels, and a bit strange (what's with all the nature watch rubbish?), but generally ok.

(Oh, wait, did you mean foreign = not UK?)

I would probably go further and say that all Australian media is crap - newspapers, radio and TV... Thing I miss most about home? The BBC! Seriously - you don't know what you've got until it's taken away. It's not even always the content on Aussie TV but they fact that nothing runs to schedule and everything stops for sport - is there a match on somewhere in the world - yes - let's not broadcast ER (or House or Boston Legal). Does my head in!

Rant over

HA hate 10 for that - when BB is on - everything is up to 30 minutes late GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

So it's not just me then HA

I keep Gee-ing myself up to read the weekend Australian and never actually manage it, for the reason you suggest. And as for the local rag, The West Australian..words fail me. I do Gruandian and BBC news online and the Sun for fun and that's it. And the ABC news site once a week.

It really is a pile of pants, the national media, have found one or two enterprising and stylish local periodicals but that's it and our local subscription only radio station has some good efforts on it.

Once again ladies HUZZAH for the BBC!

and NQC you are very funny - not !

Check out www.uknova.com.

Not quite sure how it works but you can download lots of british tv programmes, all the latest serials/soaps seem to be there.

We are in the process of the paperwork for moving to Oz and how sad does this sound - I'm a lot happier going knowing that I can still get English TV.

german tv is mostly shite, but there is a channel or two that shows good films, often in english too.

why do the germans like watching fat middle aged men & women slugging over-sized jugs of beer whilst singing in market squares while the townsfolk, wearing traditional costume slug beer & sway to the muzzak?????? What is that all about?

get sky.

I've thougt about getting the extra package from the cable people, I think the digital TV company in Berlin has loads on offer but sky would be better - but then I think I should try and go without as we only get time to watch TV in the evenings for an hour at the most! Still bugs me when the only thing worth watching out of 34 channels is the CNN or skynews channnel!
Getting sky would be too tempting for me to not do anything else but sit and watch which is what I do alot when we are in the UK, only 4 weeks to go -yeah!!

suzy dh - avid guardian reader - reads weekend australian and our local one - during the week. He thinks australian isn't bad - if that is any help.

We did have variety in the UK - news of the world during football season ( for the sport of course ), dail mail for the trash and guardian for sensible journalism.

Swiss tv was terrible apart from the Swissview panoramic programmes and webcams of the the resorts. Survived on that,BBC Prime (Ready Steady Cook, Bargain Hunt et al back-to-back all day with one hour of kids' tv ), German Channels (Friday night is Bavarian folk evening ) and CNN (our only English news coverage of 9/11) for about a year then got Sky from a local shop to save my sanity ! Now you can get cable tv including BBC1 and 2 and even ITV and other English language free-to-air channels in some areas - progress !!

Suzy - do you get the Guardian Weekly? It has been our salvation here. Sub has stopped though in advance of us leaving and I really miss it. Have discovered Delicious food magazine though and it's pretty good. Women's Weekly not as good as Good Housekeeping and copies the covers.

PS try the Townsville Bulletin for your local rag!!!

God,in my day growing up abroad,there was nowt.
Did grow up reading Aussie Women's Weekly though
(Ita Buttrose was the fragrant bouffant haired editor)and New Idea.

We have all sorts of odd stuff in Turkey,the weirdest and yet the most brilliant is something called 'Baby TYV' which is Israeli I believe,and dubbed by people who are blatantly taking the piss-putting on really bright and jolly posh accents of the sort not heard in the UK since 1960 at least.
The kids bloody love it.

And while I'm here,can anyone tell dh and me why BBC Prime is so utterly shite????

I can't believe that the BBC (purported envy of the world) is churning out crap like 'My Hero' and 'Flog it'
Dh reckons its because they sell the best stuff.

Hardly a showcase of the best of British tv is it ? ! The good drama they do occasionally deign to show is repeated endlessly over a month or two until you're so sick of it.

hannah - i love better homes and garden - fabulous recipes - made white choc fudge for dds sn kindy teachers for christmas - went down a treat. Love it when they do specials like christmas and easter things - fab.

Woman's weekly is an icon

BBC Prime can't be worse than BBC American.

BBCA is not owned by the BBC (it's owned by Discovery), and it is done completely on the cheap. They only buy in a few shows and them flog them to death, repeating each one several times a week (several times a day, even). They cancelled the up-to-date Eastenders because it didn't have the same repeating potential as Changing Rooms. And the commercials....oh, worse than most US channels, and that is saying something. It was impossible to watch a film, or anything with a plot that you actually had to follow.

The only good thing about BBCA was that the shows were all good in themselves.

That would be BBC America

I loved TV in the UK..always found something to watch.
Canada is pretty dire. Too many ads and nothing on midday when I get to watch what I want! Am completely up to date all on the big American series', having said that...
NZ was pretty rubbish too, last time I was living there, although I didn't know it at the time!

Australian commercial tv is so amateur and time-warped I am almost certain it is in fact an enormous haox, it's clear all the real Media talent sods off to White City as soon as humanly possible.

Alot of you are saying that Australian TV is rubbish - one thing I notice when I go back to the UK on holiday is that my sister regularily watches an aussie soap and there are a few different ones I think. Made me think that if the brits were buying their soaps then Australian TV maybe has more to offer! Obviously not!

admylin did you know you can buy a second hand sky box with an ex contract card (or buy a new FTV card for GPB20). Get a dish up pointing in the right direction and you have free Channel 4, Channel Five and Sky 3 (plus Sky News etc).

There are no further costs at all. To be honest Channel 4 & Five are fine for basic of english TV rather than paying a Sky subscription.