There is a slang expression about television’s many channels and offerings today as being as interesting as a coronary; while an American traveler to Greece found 517 TV channels “with nothing on.”
You comprendo television and, in turn, a Greek hotel recently offered American traveler Dave Seminara a special and even “bizarre hotel TV package with 517 channels and nothing on,” explained Seminara on Gadling. In turn, Americans on vacation in Greece and other European countries also note in blogs on various websites “how bad foreign TV” seems to be; with lots of offerings but “very strange” TV programming. Also, one blogger compared the TV reception at his Athens hotel room “as poor as the local economy,” while also stating that “when you turn the channel it has all the blinding speed of a sloth on Librium; it’s that slow to tune in one of the local cable channels.” Thus, with many Americans lamenting how there’s “nothing on TV this summer,” go figure watching TV in a foreign country when, in fact, you've traveled all that way to enjoy the local scenes and not television.
Traveler to Greece found 517 TV channels and nothing on
“Have you ever found yourself in a hotel room, searching for a sporting event on TV only to find Arab phone sex line networks, Yemeni soap operas, Russian shopping channels and a host other unwatchable programming?” explained American traveler Dave Seminara on gadling.com recently; while also explaining how he found an place to stay in Samos, Greece, during a recent vacation.
In turn, the hotel clerk told him they had a satellite TV subscription with more than 500 channels.
However, he could only find “dozens of home shopping channels in a variety of languages, scores of religious programming from the Middle East, an evangelical Korean channel, Persian music channels, more than a dozen networks offering phone sex with ‘Arab women,’ an Italian poker channel and a host of unwatchable programs from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Poland, Romania, Syria, Yemen and a host of other countries. Oddly enough, there were almost no Greek channels.”
At the same time, Seminara explained how he was angry since “there were 517 channels, but only four I'd actually consider watching: BBC World, France 24 in English, CCTV and Al Jazeera International. But later, when I decided to indulge my curiosity in this truly bizarre satellite TV package, I was able to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I had more channels from Kurdistan than from the U.S. I had the Somali Network, but not CNN. I had Dubai Sports 3, which seems to show no actual sporting events, rather than ESPN or Eurosport.”
TV watching not the thing to do in Greece
Also, he found no joy on “Oman TV that featured a rotating slideshow; an Iraqi channel called Al-Iraqia featured a cooking program with an obese chef who made omelets but mostly just pontificated; a channel called Al-Mustakillah featured a blurry image of a wailing cleric with the URL for the channel's Facebook page; Deejay TV showed grainy footage of the Eagles playing "Hotel California"; TV Quran showed pages from the Quran with a narrator reading them; a Persian channel featured an obnoxious puppet show; a channel called Al Fayhaa featured a folk band that reminded me of an Arab version of the Village People; and Yemen TV showed what appeared to be a children's talent show, where all the little boys wore traditional costumes with big daggers tucked into their belts.”
At the same time, a U.S. State Department advisory on its website warns Americans traveling abroad to "understand that television stations that you may depend upon" - for various reasons - may not be available in foreign countries. In other words, one can't assume that what you enjoy watching on American TV is also available overseas.
Overall, this American traveler soon discovered that rather than stay in one’s room and try and watch “517 TV channels,” he went outside instead and discovered all that Greece really has to offer visitors.
Image source of The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens as a symbol of classical Greece; while an American traveler found Greek TV as poor as the local economy. Photo courtesy Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece
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