What are some interesting things you learned from watching/listening to your neighbours? Do you feel like they are of a better/worse quality than yours? Is there something you’d like your country’s public broadcaster(s) to adopt?

What programmes do you watch/listen to and why?

7 comments

  1. Never.

    When it comes to the radio, I don’t listen to it in general, except maybe if I’m in the car sitting in the back, but even then I put on my earphones more often than not and listen to what I like on the phone. There just isn’t much on the radio that I’d like to listen to, especially the general radio stations that are focused on what’s popular these days.

    But when it comes to the TV, the public Polish TV is TVP – Telewizja Polska (Polish Television). But in reality it’s TV PROPAGANDA. If you dare watching news on TVP1, you’ll get sick. Lies, lies, and more lies, and lies on top of lies. And they blame Donald Tusk on everything bad. Apart from that there aren’t good movies or TV series to watch that are broadcasted on TVP1.

  2. It probably doesn’t count but I watch the RTBF news regularly to get better at French + I am subscribed to the YouTube channel “NOS op 3”, which is basically the Dutch public news for people in their 20s. Flanders doesn’t have an equivalent, neither on YouTube nor on TV nor on the radio.

  3. The only thing I watch from neighbours is the Swedish [www.svtplay.se](https://www.svtplay.se/), I love that you can add subtitles. I don’t think it is common to watch this, though, but I have really enjoyed some movies and series.

    Some people from Russian background watch Russian TV propaganda, some people from the North coast might still watch Finnish TV, as it used to be a HUGE thing to watch it illegally 30-50 years ago. I don’t know anything about Latvian TV, that’s actually a shame now that I think about it.

    But generally people don’t listen to radio a lot nor even watch TV in all circles. Younger people often don’t even have a TV subscription and prefer the online options.

  4. Never.

    I generally don’t watch TV and only listen to radio when driving and I’m usually out of range of foreign radio stations.
    Besides, the next closest neighbouring country would be Poland and I don’t understand Polish.

  5. You used to be able to receive a few German channels like RTL and Sat 1 on the old analogue Sky TV service in the UK. Was quite handy as I was learning German in high school back in the 90s.

    I think now everything’s switched to digital, you don’t get the older situations like people in Ireland receiving S4C (a Welsh-language TV channel). I’ve never heard of the reverse of that happening, though.

  6. When I was growing up me and my parents would watch Belgian and German public broadcast tv all the time. I still watch some stuff here or there, but I watch a lot less tv in general.

    Some stuff about each country:

    **Belgium**:

    The children’s tv channel KetNet was way better than the kid’s channel from the Dutch public broadcaster. Especially its live action shows (Samson & Gert, W817, Spring etc.) always seemed way better to me.

    The normal public broadcast channels (Eén and Canvas) always felt quite similar to what we’d see here in the Netherlands though. Some game shows, a few series, the news, documentaries, talk shows etc. Some programs I still like to watch from time to time are Blokken (a long running quiz show based on Tetris), FC de Kampioenen (a comedy show about a bad amateur football club) and Reizen Waes (just a great travel show with a charming host).

    I never really listened to Belgian radio, but I regularly listen to podcasts by the radio station Klara on Spotify. They are generally of very high quality and I can recommend any Dutch person to check out “[De Bourgondiërs](https://klara.be/debourgondiers)” by Bart van Loo.

    **Germany**:

    My parents always loved to watch German schlager music shows like Musikantenstadl and ZDF-Fernsehgarten, but police procedurals like Tatort were also often showing on the living room tv.

    I’d never watch any of that stuff myself nowadays, but I do still like to watch clips from Jan Böhmermann’s show, ZDF Magazin Royale (a satirical talk show), on Youtube.

  7. In French-speaking Belgium, most of the main French TV channels are included in TV subscriptions by default. In my family at least, French channels used to be the next best thing to watch. If there was nothing interesting on Belgian channels (which was often the case), my parents would switch to a French channel.

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