Some odd things about the TV:
1. There are 3 or 4 channels that seem to be publicly owned and operated like the BBCs 1 and 2 in the UK. They present "cultural" programming far more. The other night we watched a 4 hour, live documentary about St. Petersburg, a city built very much in the image of the French style its builder admired (but Italian too; Peter the Great was one of these modernisers like Kaiser Frederick II of Germany I talked about previously).
2. Commercials are marked as "publicité" on all the channels. Apparently to avoid the chance that you are fooled by the nature of the commercials.
3. The frequency of commercials during the program is much lower. Someone said this was actually regulated by the government. Only 2 interruptions per show, and they can't last more than a few minutes. Compare this to the WB in New York, in particular when they are showing movies. The breaks go on forever!
4. There are no commercials whatsoever during children's shows like cartoons. Just none at all!
5. Hardly any sitcoms like we are used to in the US. This "fast food" of the TV consumption universe essentially doesn't exist, except for "Friends" which seems to turn up a fair bit (dubbed).
6. The shows are funny lengths. Since they cut out most of the commercial time, the shows are only like 40 minutes or 22 minutes long. Strange starting times as a result on some of the cable channels.
7. Some channels are obviously "European" and not French. That is: they have a minimum of talking where possible. This is true of Much Music, Fashion TV, and Euronews. They shows videos/clothing/news without voice-over announcers from time to time. I am convinced they are broadcasting the same video to Chechnya with local announcers piped over it.
Posted by amol at August 1, 2002 02:23 PM