*pokes American TV with curiosity*

[zahri_melitor]

I have questions. Your television does not make my kind of sense, but then I live in the nice world of 5 channels, plus digital miscellanary.

Firstly, how many channels do you actually have? Free to air ones?

Could anyone give me a link to a readable TV guide for a day that I could look at?

Does your evening TV really start and run on the hour?

Comments

[zahri_melitor]

Well, ABC and SBS (Australian Broadcasting Commission and Special Broadcasting Service) are government funded. So, yeah, no ads, (though SBS now has them to provide extra funding) but they come out of the federal government budget. But they're not accountable to the government, mostly, and are where you actually get the least biased information and coverage of issues. (I mean, they have The Chasers War on Everything on ABC. Which you may actually have heard of, because they got Hillary Clinton this week, and she responded.)

A fund drive sounds like hell. They don't really do those over here - Melbourne has TV stuff during the Red Shield Appeal (annual doorknock for the Salvation Army - they usually manage to 'do' at least 2/3 of houses in suburban areas over the weekend), but yours sounds much more annoying. Otherwise, I think the nearest thing is possibly Carols by Candlelight or Carols in the Domain, and they're much more outdoor christmas carols concerts shown live that happen to feature occasional donation plugs for Vision Australia and the Salvos, respectively. Most people regard Carols as a nice tradition.

SBS is special. They show weird stuff. TV News in 12 different languages (they do radio news in 68). The stereotypical shows are lots of soccer (seriously. The network's other name is Soccer Bloody Soccer), subtitled tv shows (Mostly European and East Asian), shows with cult followings (Mythbusters, Top Gear) and really good documentaries.

When I think about the commute thing, yeah, it makes sense. We don't worry so much about it for news because you can pretty much watch news from 5pm straight through to 7.30pm by channel hopping. Any new news that is broadcast at 10.30pm is any morning emergencies in the US or midafternoon issues in Europe. Which is why most Australians will tell you they didn't hear about XYZ terrorist attack or natural disaster until first thing the next morning - they keep happening after our news and watched TV end.

I will admit 6.09 is a weird sounding time. But you have to fit Behind the News in before it, after Rollercoaster signs out for the day (Behind the News - kids news program, talking about usually a single current issue that's been in the media and explaining it at a clear, concise, Year 3 level. It's been running in one form or another since forever).