All about TV
I'd love to rant and rant about TV in general, but it wouldn't be very interesting. Let's just say that it was weird to have so many channels again. But none are really want I want. I want access to NBC for example... It'll be great when broadband is good/cheap enough that streaming TV from foreign countries - or even your home town - will be possible all over the world.
Right now, watching CNN-International doesn't do it. They have these weird foreign anchors... I used to live in Atlanta and had a friend who worked for CNNi. I got a tour of their studios, etc. It's all based out of Atlanta, why the HELL do they have heavily accented anchors when the main viewing audience is Americans??? All their news is 100% US-oriented, it's not like someone from here is going to watch and think "ooh boy, here's where I'm going to get my news." I have problems with CNN anyways. Live in Atlanta and you realize how local it really is. They'll have a spot on some international incident, then walk downstairs and interview some idiot on the street in Georgia about his feelings. Please.
Speaking of Georgia, I just saw this tidbit in the Christian Science Monitor (which is one of the best newspapers in the world that has nothing to do with Christian Science). Georgia may drop language requirements to allow more time for core subjects like math. Bozos.
Anyways, MTV is MTV-Europe... so it's more like MTV2 at home. I.e. it actually shows videos. There's VH1 which was in English (or the bits I saw at least). The rest of the channels are all in Spanish, but many are dubbed versions of American cable stations: The History Channel, The Food Channel, The Cartoon Network, etc. There's a button to switch languages to English, but the fucking thing doesn't work. WHERE DO I COMPLAIN? It'll get me nowhere, I'm sure. But I'm seriously getting on the phone tonight and bitching at someone at the cable station to flip whatever switch they need to and broadcast the other soundtrack. It's THERE, I can hear it under the (horrible) dubbing.
So. It was great to have TV. My productivity just went down 30% (at least). My favorite channel, by the way? Believe it or not: Galavision. Yep, they broadcast the American Spanish-language cable channel here. It's great because it's actually closer to a "hometown" channel in the U.S. than anything else. I saw a news program last night that was almost like a local news station from L.A. or Miami. Very cool... It's ODD, I must say, to be able to understand Galavision. I remember watching it before and having no idea what they were saying and now it's like they changed (not me) and now I get what's going on. And I REALLY love hearing American's speak Spanish. I have no idea why. Their accent is a bit clearer to me for some reason than the Spanish. Also, it's obvious many are native English speakers who are speaking Spanish too... they say words in English sometimes ("management" for example) and don't butcher the words like here in Spain. It's nice.
Okay, probably more later.
-Russ