Does your country have a special channel that plays documentaries about artists or recordings of concerts and that sort of thing?

Edit:

I’m asking for an elderly relative who likes classical music and documentaries (especially about classical music). I’d prefer to find some channels than have to find her new stuff to watch all the time.

10 comments

  1. We have arte which is a collaboration between France and Germany and 3sat which is made up of the three German speaking countries Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

  2. We have Arte, which is kind of like that (they do show other films and documentarires about other subjects, too).

    But we have to share it with the French 😉

  3. Yes. ~~NPO Cultura~~. Currently it’s showing a documentary on Moby, after that a live registration from the 2018 Amsterdam Dance Event.

    Edit: It’s called NPO 2 Extra now. Blegh.

  4. Not exclusively but ORF III is a documentary channel that sometimes has operas or concerts.

    Similar is 3sat , a joint venture of Austrian, German and Swiss public broadcasters.

    Lastly, there is ARTE which is a German-French joint venture.

    Again, all these are documentary focused but not exclusively arts.

  5. In Spain, La2, public channel, specializes in documentaries (art, architecture, engineering, nature…), rare/niche/old films, they also transmit classical and contemporary concerts, and on Sundays… The mass.

    They also retransmit sorts, famously the cyclists tours (tour de France, Spain, Italy) which are a perfect lullaby to have a nice nap.

    But I’m not sure about the language. It’s dubbed to Spanish (when it’s not content created in Spain) but maybe documentaries can be changes to their original language?

  6. On TV there Doku.lu and Nordlicht TV. Both are mostly made up of local news reports though like going to local arts exhibitions and traditional celebrations. On Radio, there’s the cultural program 100.7 they broadcast local independent music of all genres but also classic and jazz generally. Also loads of political talk in discussion tables. Always about specific issues and framed more like interviews with experts. Not like something like fox news.

  7. We don’t, to my knowledge, have any tv channels dedicated specifically to classical music, but we used to have a dedicated “cultural” channel called DR K. It was a mix of some music, some art, some history, and whatever else they felt fit the cultural theme – but that sadly got scrapped during some budget cuts. I suppose DK4 might cover some of it now together with DR2, but they are not focused solely on that.

    For radio we have stuff like P2 (which does normal news, classical music, radio documentaries on different topics, etc) and P8 (which is almost exclusively jazz)

  8. ERT3 often shows classical concerts and music, it’s the smallest of the national broadcast network TV channels. Also the parliament channel, when not broadcasting the parliament discussions, often shows concerts. But we don’t have a dedicated arts channel.

  9. There is ARTE in Germany and France, but you get some classical music on 3sat, too.

    By the way: classical music has nothing to do with art – it’s 100% business today. And reproducing scores that have been reproduced a million times before isn’t really innovative or progressive or … art … neither. Art must challenge, excite, provoke, critisize, accuse, even abuse, but not copy and reproduce!

    So why is nobody playing “new” orchestral music? Because you have to pay the musicians for the rehersals : 60 salaries just for the rehersals of something new that might not even become a success and then you don’t sell enough tickets … after having paid 60 salaries. Because no orcheter-musician will rehearse or practice any new piece without getting paid for it. So either you invest 250 grand per month into rehersals of something new, or ….

    Naw. We’re going to play it safe and on the cheap: here’s a variety of the classic “smash hits” that everybody has pummeled into his muscle-memory during his or her years on the conservaory. That’s going to sell the tickets and pay the bills. Who cares about art?

    I have A LOT more respect for every raging garage-punk-band than for orchester-musicians. The former do it for art, the latter have made it a business-case par excellence. No risks taken.

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