Um, no. You’re forgetting about the Voice of America and other entities owned and operated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Employees of these services are federal career civil servants and the BBG itself is composed of political appointees.
By law, none of these services are allowed to broadcast anywhere within the United States. If you’re curious, you can find streams of VOA programming at its website. The VOA broadcast facilities are in Washington and are open to the public for tours and such. I’ve been there and it’s amazing.
Even if they’re not allowed to broadcast into the US, they’ve still got streaming media and podcasts available so you can still hear what they sound like. The foreign-language broadcasts are helpful to students of those languages, and the Special English program is useful for explaining the news to children.
More than you wanted to know, and it doesn’t quite answer the OP, but there you go.
As a tangential note, let me add to Wendell Wagner’s splendid summary of U.S. broadcast network origins the existence of Ion Television, formerly Pax, a smaller seventh network,I believe only of owned-and-operated stations, with a focus on “family friendly” programming, some of which is mildly religious. Most of its content is syndicated repeats of older programs like “Touched by an Angel” and “Diagnosis Murder”, though they have sponsored a couple of original series.
A lot of cities, especially in tourist areas, run low power TV stations advertising what to do when you’re in the area.
A lot of rural towns that aren’t wired for cable, still run translator stations. Often they also run these low power stations and carry CNN, TBS etc. The local taxes pay for the cost of these translators, that also bring in the networks from the nearest markets
My use of “used to be” was an indication that the current government funding is a lot less than it used to be.
Despite the government funding, laws are in place that prohibit the federal government from interfering with or dictating content. The only restriction in place is that PBS must be objective about coverage of controversial matters - and even that restriction is limited because the government has no teeth to enforce it as they cannot interfere.
Um, not to get bogged down in nitpicky details, but the OP asked if there were government TV stations. VOA produces television programming, but except for TV Marti, to my knowledge it doesn’t operate any broadcast TV facilities.
Same thing with the Pentagon Channel (and NASA TV for that matter). As cable TV channels they provide programming, but they don’t control which cable systems carry them, and no one is forced to carry them.
It’s a tricky distinction. Perhaps the OP could clarify what “Government stations” means to him/her.
The VOA transmits its broadcasts from its Independence Ave. facility right in the middle of DC. The building has at least one TV studio that I know of; I saw the start of a live newscast in Farsi when I was there for a tour in 2005. We weren’t allowed to take photos or I’d have one to link to.
Next time I do that, I’ll keep track of the PSAs. I do seem to recall a goodly number of PSAs explaining the importance of OPSEC.
For those who are morbidly curious, “Hercules” can be found here. It’s best to watch it with an empty bladder because, like all AFN spots, it’s damn hilarious.
I was asking the question to find the answer why everywhere in the World you seem to be able to get CNN and FOX but obviously they are not Government Stations, wereas i can get Korean, Australien, Japanese, German, French, Italian and many more which are Government operated and controled.
Does anybody know of a EU Station?
Wow, I had no idea that the WB and UPN didn’t exist anymore and had never heard of “The CW” before. And I watch a fair amount of TV!
(This is what TiVo does to you… your TV watching becomes show-centric and you lose track of the concept of “channels” and “timeslots” an such.)
Euronews is probably the closest you’ll get - not an EU station, but formed by the unrelated European Broadcasting Union, a federation of European broadcasters, many of them ‘public service’ in some way.
As for why you can get CNN and Fox everywhere - well, you’re actually getting CNN International, set up to be an international product separate from the domestic channel, and everything in the world is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
If you live overseas, you can get Voice of America broadcasts. You do need the schedule, since I’m not sure they broadcast 24/7.
The reason why you can’t get VOA in the United States proper is because by law, tradition and custom (and in the case of the VOA, by specific law), we do not now, nor have we ever had, a government-controlled media in the United States. There are some exceptions, the largest being media that is produced for specific audiences such as the military and government workers. However, the courts have taken a dim view of attempts by the government to require or ban content, although the government may censor content during times of exceptional necessity, such as wartime.
So the short answer is that the government couldn’t run a state-owned media outlet in the US even if it wanted to, which it doesn’t. Any attempt to establish such an outlet would likely be tied up in court, and the courts would likely not allow it anyway.
That Special English thing for VOA is amazing. That would be really cool for people learning English. I can’t imagine being the one to read those (for the broadcasts), though. I am not sure I could force myself to have that careful diction and that pace.
