11 channels !!
One of the surprises when I returned from Australia and (belatedly) settled down was the number of free TV channels here. Me and the Girlie had talked about getting Sky, but now I'm wondering about that.At mine we get 11 free channels. That's pretty unbelievable really. We get 1, 2, 3 and C4, Prime and Triangle, Maori and Racing. We get Juice, Alt and a strange channel playing NASA material all day long. Okay there's some in there you'd never watch, but later everything changes again.
One goes to BBC. Prime goes to Fox. Triangle goes to Voice of America.
I've been keeping strange hours of late so I've been watching each of these carefully. Fox is total populist crap. It's the sort of TV you'd get if you gave Winston Peters the job of TV programmer - pure unadulterated tosh.
Sadly BBC World Service, in its own way, isn't much better. Okay it has some good in-depth shows, but the basic news is shallow. They did a piece on Iraq last night that was just a complete nothing.
The one that unexpectedly grabs me is VOA. Again last night, a great interview with Fred Siegel, author of a book about the success of Rudi Guliani's New York. Superb, thoughtful stuff. Sadly it was followed by a real hard-nosed, old-style journo, John McLaughlin (pictured), interviewing ... Miss America 2006. Apparently she can dance on her toes despite having an elongated big toe.
posted by Rob O'Neill at 9:10 PM
10 Comments:
We are quite blessed. Interestingly, I used to record the BBC World broadcast overnight when they had less news. They’d fill it up with The Money Programme, Top Gear, Panorama, and a whole heap of good stuff, regularly. Ever since they went more newsy, the fact the budgets are less than CNN’s and Al-Jazeera’s is pretty obvious.
I have stayed away from getting Sky. My experience is that there are a few more channels to surf through before deciding there is nothing to watch. Why get RSI in your thumb when you can come to the same conclusion with the free-to-air channels?!
Yes, I might have to give the Girlie some bad news when she moves in.
And if you get a satellite dish you can pick up even more free-to-air channels, including 3 versions of SBS.....
I think there’s Deutsche Welle Television beaming down here, which has the mixture of programmes we used to see with BBC World, although some of it is in German. Might find some Christian broadcasts, too, I imagine, like Trinity.
Anonymous, do you know if any of the French beam their signals down here as well?
I have a satellite dish as well (sky dish?). Can you use that without a decoder?
Do you get Jon Stewart's Daily Show (produced by Comedy Central) on any cable channel in NZ now? It's so worth watching.
DS is shown on CNN, Cheezy.
Don’t really know, Rob. I know DW beams down here as there is a shop in town that has a satellite dish on its roof. Plus the old Channel 7 in Wellington used to rebroadcast DW. I guess if it picks up that particular frequency, it should, but goodness knows how you’d tune your TV into those particular frequencies.
DW TV is on the TVNZ transponder on B1 (same sources as Sky but it's free when you buy your own dish/decoder). TV5 (French state broadcaster) is on AS-3, can be received in Auckland on a 2.5 metre dish, or just watch Triangle TV at 6PM for the French news.
Thanks, Uroskin. I actually quite like TV5 so I may well look into this, and how one can receive it in Wellington.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home