I don't know if this thread should be in this part of the forums, but since it has to do with tv...

Since I'm only familiar with the Dutch tv station system, and I always hear people talk about cable, satellite and other words that I don't get, I was wondering how the tv station thing works in your country. Do you have commercial tv stations, public ones, or both? Can you watch every station for free, or do you have to pay? Are there local stations?

Please, let me know, because I'm very curious!

[ May 29, 2002, 08:09 AM: Message edited by: Lo78 ]

I live in the US. We have one public station that is operated through government money and donations. The donations are done every few months when they have 'commercials' where they ask for money to keep the station working. These stations do not have advertisements.

There are 'local' stations that almost anyone with a tv can see. These are usually the CBS, NBC, ABC, and sometimes FOX, UPN and WB. These stations have local news and some national programming (like Friends). Sometimes the quality of these is bad because you need an antenna.

There are cable channels which you have to subscribe to. These have CNN, Food Network, HBO, etc. It varies by location, but sometimes you have to pay for each channel, sometimes they come as a set. With cable service, you also get the local and public channels.

There is digital cable where you get more channels, but it is almost like the above.

Then there is satellite TV. This provides the greatest amount of channels and is sometimes cheaper than digital cable (depending on where you live). You subscribe to this service and either buy or rent the satellite dish which is placed somewhere near your house.

What sort of tv do you have?

Thanks for the explanation, Lady Macbeth!

I'll try to explain the situation over here, but it's quite complicated, so forgive me if it gets a bit confusing at times...

Very few people in the Netherlands have an antenna, only those living "in the middle of nowhere" (for us that means more than 5 km out of a village/town ). They can see all 3 public stations (I'll get to them later) and some public foreign ones, depending on where they live. If they live in the east of the country, they'll get German stations, if they live in the south the Belgian ones, in the south-east even both! Sometimes BBC, depending on the weather...

Almost everybody (say 98%) has cable. They offer around 30 stations as a set, including public, local, commercial and foreign stations.

Nobody I know has satellite TV, only immigrants tend to have them, as they cannot get their home stations any other way. It's definitely more expensive than cable!

So now to the Dutch stations you get, assuming you have cable.

There are 3 public tv stations that are subsidized by the government, so by our taxes really. They do have commercial breaks, but not interrupting the programmes, only before and after.
The programmes on the public stations are taken care of by ten broadcasting organizations (this is where it gets comlicated). They originally represented a part of the population. You'd have one for the left-wing working class, one for the catholics, etc. Nowadays that signature is almost non-existing anymore. The more members the organizations have, the more broadcasting hours they get. Their programmes have to meet certain government standards in order to get susidized. Every TV station is shared by a couple of organizations. If you'd want to watch something cultural, you'd watch "Nederland 3", sports is always on "Nederland 2", E.R. on "Nederland 1", etc.

We have 6 Dutch commercial stations that have commercial breaks every 20-30 minutes (when we watch Oprah, about every fifth break on Oprah is one for us ) and broadcast all kinds of shows, like Friends, As The World Turns, Dharma & Greg and Dutch ones as well, of course!

Besides the regular commercial stations we have Cartoon Network, Eurosport and Dutch versions of the National Geographic Channel, the Discovery Channel and MTV. That's all for the specialized stations!

Every province has it's own local station, but (and forgive me for saying) its broadcastings look more like a hobby club having fun, than like a professional station. They tend to have a three hour programme that is repeated all day!

Phew, I'm done! Hope I didn't bore you all with this elaborate story...

[Forgot to say that on cable, you get 2 British, 3 German, 3 Belgian, 1 French, 1 SPanish, 1 Italian, 1 Turkish and 1 Arab station as well...]

[ May 30, 2002, 02:41 AM: Message edited by: Lo78 ]

Ah! Here, the people who have the cable television have one or two channels which is called 'public access.' That means that there are some poorly-made tv shows about the local area.

The public television is what our tax money goes to. There are programs on gardening, British comedies, opera, home repair and movies.