european televisiom

Every hotel I've ever stayed in, everywhere in the world, has had lots of local channels in addition to a few international offerings like BBC World, CNN Int, NHK etc. In any event, you're stuck with what they give you.

Our experience is the same with a number of local channels or at least I assume they are local since they are in the local language. And then there are often a couple of English channels with marginal selection. But, who cares, we are not there to watch local TV.

You are "stuck" with what you get in an individual hotel. But I've never had a problem getting local programs. Sometimes, that's the only thing on. While some hotels get cable systems geared for international viewers (I remember being particularly dazzled by the variety of countries and languages on offer in Belgium in 2002), others get national stations only (I remember this particularly in Italy in the late 1990's). Note my use of the past tense - TV access and cable systems change, and I would expect more countries have more variety now. The catch for you may be "live." Think of how it works here in the US. Live programming is mostly restricted to news and morning shows, so if you're not watching when these are on, you won't get "live, local TV" in the US either. As an aside, for a variety of morning shows, my favorite was Montreal. I was able to get three US ones (ABC, NBC, and CBS), several from Montreal (in English and French), from Ottawa (in English and French), Quebec City (in French) and Toronto (several, all in English). And, all were live!

Ahhh....memories of watching old Charlie's Angels in Italian in Cinque Terre! How I wished for an English channel :)

It depends what you mean by "local". In most of Europe (from what I have seen), television stations broadcast mostly at a national level. For example, NOS, the Dutch national broadcaster, operates 3 channels that the entire country receives. A viewer of NOS1 in Amsterdam would see the exact same programming as someone in Breda. It's not like in the US where every market has its own affiliates of the national networks. Germany is somewhat of an exception. In addition to the two national public channels (Eins and ZDF), each region has its own public broadcaster. This arrangement was probably more important before the advent of cable and satellite television. Now, you can watch any of the regional affiliates from anywhere else in the country. But I'm not sure why you've never seen any local TV. Even when I've stayed at large business class hotels, I could see at least the national broadcaster.

Assuming by local, you mean the country you are in as opposed to international channels. Wish I were staying where you were staying. I seemed to be lucky to find one English news channel, and not much else. Some of the hotels I stayed at in Italy had 30 or more channels, all in Italian. When I have (infrequently) stayed in 4 and 5 star hotels, there seemed to be more for travelers, and more for business travelers. It seems to me that I've seen live shows in the morning - with traffic and weather reports in the local language. Aside from that, what live tv do you see anywhere anymore?

"Some of the hotels I stayed at in Italy had 30 or more channels, all in Italian." Chani - that was my experience, too. As I said, that was in the late 1990's - I guess it hasn't changed. I also guess we've stayed in some of the same hotels <g>.

Harry, you and I have experienced different Europes. Every European hotel I've been in has local and national channels. A few have the afore mentioned BBC World and CNN Intl. but the only time I ever got a channel geared for travelers was in a hotel in Berlin where they had a show to assist people traveling to Japan. In other words, don't worry about your next trip to Europe. You're bound to find many local channels at which to marvel.

After trying to find any show in English and being unsuccessful we have resorted to watching the local 'soap opera' type shows and making up our own dialog. Just turn the sound down real low and script your own dialog.... great entertainment when you are too tired to do any more sight-seeing. Especially fun with those overly dramatic French or Italian game shows.

The stations aren't necessarily "geared for travelers from different countries" as much as they are geared for the market being served. And if you're talking about the big international cities, you're going to find many channels being broadcast from abroad in-language (via cable/satellite). So, you'll get international stuff in English, like Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN International, etc. And in cities like London, Frankfurt, or Toronto here, you'll get in-language programming with channels catering to ethnic communities that make up a big chunk of the population, so you'll get channels from Russia, Italy, India, China, etc. It's really not for travelers...it's for locals. Like others, I've always seen the local channels, too, so maybe you're just missing them somehow.

I've stayed at lots of hotels in Europe. My hotels are usually on the "budget" end of the spectrum, like the lower-priced hotels in the RS books. In some hotels there are only local and in-country TV stations. In others, especially in France, CNN in English is included. European CNN is not the same as the programming we get in the USA. More all news and world-oriented. In Britain, I have watched CNN and Judge Judy at a few hotels. I'm not sure what channel that is. I think the selection of channels depends on the package the hotel buys. At more expensive hotels, there may be a bigger selection.

Hi, My TV language experience in hotels/Pensionen is about the same. I think it may also depend the particular programming the hotel has at the moment. I've stayed at a two star hotel at Gare du Nord where the entire programming was in French with the exception two channels, one in German, the other Italian. That was unusual since I had been there before and BBC World News and CNN always were on. Most places I find in the big cities will have either but that depends on type of accomodation, a small hotel or a big 3-4 star hotel, a chain or otherwise. If you're at a small hotel or Pension in Germany, expect the programming to be all German, either German or Austrian channels, if there's a TV in the room at all. That's basically been my experience. The Pension in Berlin had a TV (this particular time it did) with all programming in German.

It's fun to watch American TV or movies dubbed in other languages. John Wayne speaking French; the Roseanne show in German. I've seen Mr. Bean in
Spanish and The Simpsons in several languages. So far, I haven't seen Judge Judy speak anything but American English. She'd be good in German. So expressive!

I have watched plenty of local TV in the countries I have visited. Denmark, Belgium, France, Morocco, Turkey & Germany of course. Lots of fun to see what is on, read the sub-titles and hear the voices that each country has chosen for the various stars.

This thread prompts me to ask something I have wondered about for some time. During my travels I have seen movies originally in English that are dubbed into the local language. My question is when dubbing movies, is the same voice used consistently for one actor? Example: For a Tom Cruise movie, does he have the same voice each time or can it vary from film to film?

I've traveled to dozens of hotels in European countries, big and small, and my complaint is sometimes the opposite - only CNN and BBC as English-channel options. I can't remember having stayed in any hotel in Europe where A LOT of national channels of each country I was at weren't available. The only difference is that you don't have city or region-based TVs as common as you find them in US. Most TV networks are national (countries aren't that big after all), and there is barely any local TV, when it is, usually is 20 years behind in technology and has crap programming.

@Andrea: Germany, Italy and Spain have markets big enough to allow that recourse (same voice-dubber for same actor). Smaller markets will usually have even crappier dubbing (reason by which subtitled movies and TV series are more common in Netherlands or Norway than Germany or Austria for instance). Fortunately, younger generations are being more subtitling-friendly because they have greater exposure to written English through Internet.

Thanks Andre!

Andrea, to answer your concrete example (which is fairly typical) for the German market: there are (at least) three phases with regards to Tom Cruise's German voice actors. Before 1989 (i.e. Top Gun) he hadn't a "dedicated voice actor," and was dubbed by various actors.
Between that and 1996 he was mainly dubbed by Stephan Schwartz, after that by Patrick Winczewski. The last part of the Mission Impossible franchise was dubbed by someone new, maybe that's just because Mr Winczewski wasn't available, or we're entering the reign of a new voice actor.

The dubbing discussion reminded me of Katherine Helmond, who played Jessica Tate (brilliantly) on "Soap" - for those of you who remember. She said she watched the dubbed show in every country she visited, and was always surprised to see how many foreign languages she knew. Her favorite was the Japanese version.

Hadn't really thought about it, but the beauty of a vacation in a foreign country is the lack of English tv options compared to home. I like the fact that we can withdraw from US and World reality for a good part of our vacation.