Do cable providers in the US provide loads of international channels?

Factual Questions
1

I recently got cable here in Paris, and, as a result, I often find myself watching Algerian game shows and italian sit-coms, though I can’t even understand a word. I even watched some of the Saddam trial on al-Jazeera, though I certainly didn’t understand anything.

Of the channels I get here, I get American, British, French, Chinese, Middle-Eastern, and several European stations. However, of all the times I’ve watched tv in the States, I’ve never seen anything but the Spanish channel. However, my family has always had basic cable, no direct TV or satellite…So do other Americans get outside channels?

One thing friends of mine mention (especially those from the middle east) is that they see how distorted the news can be because they can watch CNN, al-Jazeera, the BBC, and their local news to see how little points are twisted or worded differently.

Just curious…

2

Without doing any searching, just posting off the cuff:

This kind of thing, when available, is normally a premium service from a satellite provider, not from standard cable television companies. For major European and Latin American networks (BBC and the equivalent), it’s not prohibitively difficult to find a carrier. For actual Middle Eastern or East Asian channels, though, you’d have to search high and low.

3

It’s rare in most of the US for cable to do it. There are Spanish-language channels, but these usually originate in the US, and some systems include the BBC, but there is all too much choice available just from US cable networks.

Satellite may be different; if you have your own dish, you can get anything that not encoded.

There’s just not a lot of interest in the US for TV from other countries.

4

Yes, BBC America, most spanish-language mexican stations, several Indian channels, and I think there are a few asian channels as well

5

No, no, no. U.S. entertainment including things like movies is extremely American-centered to the point of excluding almost everything else for most people. There is typically no foreign content except for a handful of old British sitcoms (You’ve been served), maybe the BBC but probably not, Masterpiece theater and other PBS shows, and some Spanish language content channels usually from the U.S. but maybe from Latin America (more likely) or Spain (less likely).

Americans typically do not go for foreign media much at all and most people’s viewing is going to be well over 99% American content.

6

I work for a cable company, so I get every single channel that we offer for free. Let me grab my remote control and see what international channels I have…

23 Spanish language channels.

9 additional international channels, including:

Zee TV, which appears to be from India.

TV Asia, which shows a variety of programming from all over Asia.

TV 5…this appears to be a French language channel. They are currently broadcasting something about the labor riots currently going on.

ART, The Arabic Channel…currently showing what looks like an Arabic soap opera, but I have seen news reports and what look like movies and documentaries on this channel before. Also, they show a lot of soccer.

TFC - The Filipino Channel. This channel always show a variety of programming from the Philippines. Even though I can’t understand them, I really enjoy watching the Filipino game shows. They’re great!

TVR - TV Russia. This channel always seems to be showing Russian news, but every once in a while it will show movies and game shows.

Sino Star - Chinese TV. This channel seems like a Chinese version of TBS, showing a variety of many different types of programming, all in Chinese.

Chinese Cinema - As I am sure you have guessed, this channel shows nothing but Chinese made movies.

RAI - Italian TV. This channel shows a lot of news shows, religious programming, and regular italian tv series.

It has been my experience that many cable companies will carry at least this many international channels, but they are not cheap. The company that I work for charges at least $10 per international channel, with most of them costing at least $15 a month. You must subscribe to digital cable and have a cable box if you want to be able to receive these channels. The Spanish channels are a lot cheaper, only costing $6.50 per month for all of them.

7

On the channel listings page (Warning: inexplicably-large PDF) for Rogers Cable, the cable provided in my area, there are the following ‘multicultural’ channels:

581 ATNB ATN Bangla
583 ZGUJA Zee Gujarati
584 ASTHA AASTHA Television Channel (Indian)
585 ZCINE Zee Cinema (Indian)
586 NDTV NDTV 24x7 (New Delhi Television) (Indian/ English)
599 PHNIX Phoenix North America Chinese Channel (Mandarin)
601 FAIR Fairchild Television (Chinese)
602 TALNT Talentvision (Chinese)
603 FAIRW Fairchild Television West (Chinese)
604 ATN ATN (Asian Television Network) (Indian)
605 SBTN SBTN Vietnamese Channel
606 MABHY The Mabuhay Channel (Filipino)
607 JAPAN TV Japan
608 ALLTV All TV (Korean)
610 RAI RAI International
611 RAIFM RAI Satelradio
612 FPTV Festival Portuguese Television
613 ODSY Odyssey (Greek)
614 ERTST ERT sat (Greek)
615 TLN Telelatino (TLN)
616 ARAB Abu Dhabi TV (Arabic)
617 ART ART America (Arabic)
618 PVTV Persian Vision (Farsi)
619 KRSI Persian Vision KRSI Radio (Farsi)
620 TAMIL ATN Tamil (Jaya TV)
621 TVI Tamil Vision
622 TTV TamilTV
623 PUNJA Alpha ETC Punjabi (ATN Punjabi)
624 B4U B4U Movies (ATN Bollywood for You - Hindi)
625 SONY Sony Entertainment Television Asia (SET Asia) (Hindi)
626 SSTV SSTV (Punjabi)
627 ARY ARY Digital (ATN Urdu)
630 CH5 Channel 5 (Ukrainian)
631 TVP TV Polonia
632 PR3 Polskie Radio 3 (Polish)
633 PR1 Polskie Radio 1 (Polish)
634 NTVRU NTV Canada (Russian)
635 ISRLI The Israeli Network (Hebrew)
636 RTVi RTVi (Russian)
637 WMNB WMNB (Russian)
638 RTVi+ RTVi+ (Russian)
640 CARIB ATN Caribbean (CBN Commonwealth Broadcasting Network)
641 TG24 SKY TG24 Canada
642 LEOWD Leonardo World Canada
643 VIDIT Video Italia Canada
644 TLNW Telelatino West (TLN West)
648 RTPi RTPi (Portuguese)
649 GLOBO TV Globo Internacional (Portuguese)

Some of these are originated domestically, or have domestic content.

In addition, there are the following French channels (many domestic):

652 HDSRC HD CBC French Toronto (CBLFT)
654 TFO TVOntario French (TFO - CHLF)
655 TV5 TV5
666 CFTM TVA Montreal (CFTM)
670 RDI RDI
671 CPACF CPAC French (main audio)
672 MPLS. MusiquePlus
673 RDS. RDS
675 VIE Canal Vie
676 TOONF Télétoon (French)
677 VRAK. VRAK.TV
678 ARTV ARTV
679 CANLN Le Canal Nouvelles (LCN)
681 MMAX MusiMax
682 EVAS Canal Évasion
683 CANLZ Ztélé
684 FHIST Historia
685 SPLUS Séries+
686 CNLD. Canal D
687 METE. Météo Média
691 S1 Super Écran 1

This doesn’t include things like the BBC (three channels), Deutsche Welle, and EuroNews, which are mixed in among other channels. The US channels, of course, have been there from the beginning.

These channels all require a digital cable box. Most cost extra, as well.

8

Absolutely. I’ve seen people get wiggy when they find out the show they just watched was produced in <gasp!> Canada.

Same people also get apoplectic when they find out that their cable/satellite provider even dares to offer international programming.

9

Wow, we don’t have anything like that available herem despite having a very large university with many foreign students. All we have are about 15 Spanish language channels. It’s a pity, if I had access to international channels, I might be tempted to bump my cable up to digital from standard. (Hear that TimeWarner Austin?)

10

I am hardly xenophobia and Canada produces some good TV. What’s up with the cinemaphotography coming out of other countries?

Italian TV: Car drives along a winding road. Show the car from ten or twelve angles as it goes. Car stops. Random shot. Couple walks over to a stream. Shot of a rock with water rushing over it for 10 or 12 seconds.

It weirds me right out I tell ya.

11

It does depend on where you are in America - I have very little foreign content available to me here, just HBO in Espanol and some BBC stuff. People in California seem to have a whole lot more. I can’t even get Mexican soap operas! (If I went to satellite, there’s some foreign language tiers, but even that isn’t going to include Al Jazeera.)

12

Are you serious? Wow. Some people need to get a grip.

I have access to a couple different cable providers, depending on where I am during the week. RCN has the following foreign language channels:

114 RTVI
115 RTVI Plus
116 NTV America
130 TV Japan
131 ART America-Arabic
132 CCTV4-Chinese
133 TFC-Tagalog
134 TV5-French
135 RAI-Italian
136 TV Asia-Hindi
137 ZeeTV-Hindi
138 Zhong Tian-Chinese
139 RTN-Russian

Cablevision has these on offer:

238 Chinese Channel
242 World Picks Hindi on Demand
243 TV Asia (Indian/Asian Programming)
244 ITV Gold (Indian/Asian Programming)
245 Zee TV (Indian/Asian Programming)
250 World Picks Russian on Demand
251 RTVi (Russian Programming)
252 RTN (Russian Programming)
253 Channel 1 Russia
254 NTV America (Russian)
261 MKTV (Korean Programming)
262 MBC (Korean Programming)
265 TV Japan
276 SPT (Portuguese Programming)
279 RAI (Italian Programming)
282 TV Polonia (Polish Programming)

That’s not counting the plethora of Spanish-language channels that both offer, some of which are Spanish versions of regular programming (e.g., The History Channel, Discovery Channel), others of which originate from various places in Latin America and the Caribbean.

I think it’s fairly obvious that where the market has a lot of recent immigrants to make it worthwhile for the cable company to offer premium choices (and they are pricey, sometimes as much as $15/channel), they’re going to do it.

I might be off base, but I think maybe one of the reasons you get channels from so many places in Europe is that individual countries don’t have anywhere near as much homegrown programming as the U.S. (for better or worse). Heck, a full basic cable package from RCN starts you off with 86 channels, and Cablevision’s family package (one step up from broadcast basic) gives you 140+ channels. How many channels are available in Europe as a whole, does anyone know?

13

My cable system offers about 200 channels in the basic package. This doesn’t include the premium channels like HBO and the sports events channels. There are perhaps ten Spanish-language channels, whose shows seem to originate partly from Latin America and partly from the U.S. There’s BBC America, which shows British shows packaged for American audiences, which means that often it’s showing British shows from months ago and classic British shows from decades ago. Furthermore, the commercials are American. It does today’s BBC World Service news. So does one of the PBS stations that I get. There’s a channel that does the daily news show from a dozen different countries without translations. There’s the various British TV shows that PBS does (and occasionally they do other countries too, like Canada or Australia). There are, of course, occasional foreign movies on the movie channels, foreign sports events on sports channels, and foreign cartoons on cartoon channels. Everything else is American.

14

I hate to bring it up, because you went to so much work, and I’m always pleased when someone points out the incredible cultural diversity of Canada, but… well, we’re not American, you know:

:wink:

15

From what I’ve seen of both satellite and cable, the answer to the OP is mostly no, or hardly at all. Such foreign stations as are presented are geared towards large immigrant communities, comprising loads of Latin American offerings along with Asian (both South and East), and, in the case of my area, Persian.

Except for the BBC, which is something of a special case, Europe is not even on the map because we get so few immigrants from there anymore.

16

Because of the high Arab-American population in the Detroit area, WOW cable offers 6 Arabic language channels (including Al-Jazeera) for about an extra $20/mo. I don’t remeber Comcast offering those channels at all.