Sixteen Volts

The Finnish TV is quite different from what we get here in Ontario. For starters, there are only five channels. What's this, 1970? (Actually, back then there were only two channels, both state-owned.) Actually having only five channels is not nearly as bad as it might sound to people accustomed to hundreds of channels, since when you think about it, all the shows that I would want to watch could easily fit even to a single channel. So as long as those shows play, I would be totally happy. Since these channels buy the American shows only after they have actually established themselves, this system filters away the worst crap so that the Finns never have to see it. Since there are far fewer commercials (and in the two state-owned channels, none), the shows are more pleasant to watch. As a side effect, the channels don't even try to make the shows start on the hour and on the half hour, but shows get to start pretty much whenever, like ten past or twenty-five past the hour.

There is one really annoying similarity which is so unintentionally funny that I have to mention it. On Sunday, both American and Finnish channels tend to play shows such as Simpsons and Futurama. And what do you know, there is often sports preceding these shows. In USA it's football, whereas in Finland it's Formula 1, and these sports are never guaranteed to end at the announced time. So what do you know, the episodes of these good shows often get delayed or even cancelled altogether, for the freaking sports.

I have become a lot more fickle these days watching TV. Unless a new show hooks me in with its very first episode, that's that for that show as far as I am concerned. The Internet is just so much... better. I have also given up many shows that I used to enjoy, such as CSI and 24, once I realized that all these shows play essentially the same episode each week. Why bother? I recently tried to watch the current season opener of 24, but when agent Bridget had just evaded a car bomb and ran away while talking on her phone, and agent Tubbo just kept telling her that he's going to tell her something important instead of actually just saying it, after which agent Bridget, realizing she is being chased, just went all ladylike "Sorry, I can't talk right now" instead of, you know, saying something freaking commonsense such as "I'm being chased, send help!", the suspension structure of my disbelief collapsed into a heap of rubble.

I typically mostly watch movies and documentaries these days, and subscribe to the Movie Network to see the last year's movies and the new episodes of the major HBO shows. For ten bucks a month, it's worth the price. I would like to also watch some good nineties movies that I remember fondly, but the channels that would play them, which here means Spike and TBS, severely edit their movies for both time and content. That by itself is not really that serious, since I am no longer a teenager and the sight of boobies or ultra-violence really isn't that exciting any more. But a commercial break about every ten minutes is extremely annoying, and makes it quite impossible for me to enjoy these movies.

By the way, here's a plea to my American readers. Could you explain to me why the middle finger gesture always has to be blurred, almost as if it was boobies or a penis or the F-word? Is giving the finger really that rude a gesture? This is one of the strangest cultural differences to me personally.

Now that we got the digital terminal with all the cable channels, we also get to see the timeshifted channels of other Canadian time zones, plus some more American local channels. This is educational, since it's always good to open a window to different cultures and learn more about them! It's like the universal brotherhood of man, or something. The differences between TV commercials in Canada and USA turn out to be interesting. The American network channels that are shown here still tend to have localized Canadian commercials, and the commercials in the local channels of Western New York that we receive here are not really that different from ours in spirit. (If I ever go visit Western New York and get seriously injured due to somebody's negligence, I sure know who I should get to represent me: the man, the legend, whose leadership was forged in the fires of the first Gulf War!)

However, the commercials aired for Americans further south are a whole different thing indeed. We could still get to see Fox News here by paying extra, but I don't think I will do that. Frankly, you get to read so much about this particular network that it feels to me like I've been a regular viewer already. Fox News Sunday still plays on Sunday mornings on regular Fox, though. I watched a couple of Fox News shows when we got two months of free special cable along with the new digital terminal, so I can pretty well understand what the fuss is all about. But far more shocking to me than the shows were the commercials between them. Now those were a truly revealing window to the mind of a right-wing Fox News watcher and Bush administration cheerleader.

I also remember, many years ago, when I wasn't living here yet but just visiting Canada for the summer, channel flipping to what must have been Fox News Sunday and for a moment, believing in total seriousness that I was watching some Mad TV parody. The overall tone and demeanour of the anchors was so over the top, almost something out of a professional wrestling show, that I couldn't possibly see it as a real news report.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Thursday, January 26, 2006 at 10:20 AM