Availability of other national broadcasters

But shouldn't the national public broadcasters in those respective countries have near exclusive rights to show the programmes in question? In Canada, ABC/NBC/CBS is available on most pay-TV but it's practically pointless because during the primetime hours, a feed from a Canadian network replaces those US network feeds.

If their practise is to dub the programmes into the broadcaster's main language, it would be understandable as Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes can't be expected to understand the other languages perfectly. Which is why I don't see issues with Das Erste, ZDF, RTL, Rai, and even France Televisions show originally English programmes virtually FTA across most of Europe - they dub shows and remove the original language track from some feeds, thus providing some protection to original rights' holders.

No, because those channels are nowhere to be found unencripted on satellite. And receiving Spanish terestrial TV in Switzerland is impossible.

There may have been an appetite for Irish TV in the UK, especially in the '80s. The problem was that there wasn't RTE overspill in the high population areas of Britain. There was Overspill in North Wales to the point where RTE 1 and 2 were carried in the listing of The Daily Post. Live 3.00 pm Div One football on a Saturday will always get an audience.

Meanwhile back in Ireland UKTV reception was possible on the east coast which has the biggest population Centre in the Country.

Tara TV would not be proof of popularity one way or another of Irish TV, It's closure is proof of the office politics that happens in RTE all the time.

Irish TV was never a proper TV station, It was all PR hype. Viewing figures in Ireland were almost non-existant so it was unlikely to do any better anywhere else.

I went to Hungary about 12/13 years ago and I remember on their basic Cable system they had a lot of the German commercial channels, such as RTL and Pro7 which dominated a good number of channels. I believe there was the odd Italian channel thrown in too. I was quite surprised considering whilst both Germany and Italy aren’t too far from Hungary they weren’t their neighbours either. For instance there were no Slovakian or Romanian channels available.

For those really interested the only channels in English were BBC Prime and CNNi. Prime had Hungarian subtitles on almost everything. Interestingly (without going too off topic), HirTV which is a Hungarian News channel had about half an hour of BBC World News per day, but dubbed into Hungarian.

I’ve always found the Canadian practice of “simsubbing” intriguing, mainly because as far as I know no other country in the world has adopted it and also from a “there but for the grace of God go we” POV. For the unitiated, this basically allows Canadian channels showing the same programme as a US channel to request that the US channel’s signal be pulled for the duration and replaced with the Canadian channel. The rules are a bit more complex than that (for example, it only works if the programmes are on at the same time, are the same episode, and in principle at least only for terrestrial stations against other terrestrial stations). What it’s meant is that CTV and Global effectively base their entire acquisition and scheduling strategies about being able to avail of it to the maximum opportunity, which may to some seem like it’s actually shot Canadian content in the foot (Sample: the same group owns the Canadian rights to both the NFL and CFL, and the NFL airs FTA so it can be simsubbed while the CFL is on pay TV).

No one else has tried it. In Ireland virtually the only channel with blackouts is ITV4 (and only on cable) (Premier Sports also during GAA season). We never got Channel 5 on pay TV here, while UTV disappeared when the late lamented UTV Ireland came along.

They do have 'near exclusive' rights. The rebroadcast of neighbouring country channels is a specific exception. They are not part of any general packages - and are almost always a separate 'bolt on' aimed at ex-pats. The vast majority of viewers in Sweden won't have paid for access to NRK or DR/TV2 as an extra subscription on their pay-TV platform, and will only have access to the NRK and DR shows that SVT have acquired (i.e. bought) when they are broadcast on SVT channels or made available on SVT Play.

This is similar to the situation with the BBC in Benelux countries. The BBC have a commercial deal with platform operators that allows BBC One and BBC Two to be carried on their pay-TV platforms (though in this case they are often not a bolt-on but part of a general package due to the popularity of BBC channels). The BBC still sells shows to Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourgeois broadcasters - even though those shows may have been previously available to a smaller audience live on BBC channels at an earlier date. They are minor exceptions.



Yes. That's pretty unique to Canada I believe, largely because Canadian and US stations broadcast the same shows at roughly the same times? That's very different to the NRK/DR/SVT and BBC situation where the shows could be being shown weeks, months or years later on their neighbouring broadcasters' channels.


Dubbing is unheard of outside kids shows in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Subtitling is universally used for all shows aimed at those who can read, dubbing is kind of unheard of in those territories.

Swedish and Norwegian have an incredibly high level of mutual intelligibility, Norwegian and Danish have high levels of mutual intelligibility (less so a bit for Swedish and Danish), and English is nearly universally intelligible to the Dutch.

French and German language shows will also be subtitled not dubbed in Scandinavia (the same is now true in the UK by the way)

In Norway the subtitles for non-Norwegian language shows on NRK are entirely optional and rendered by the set top box (rather than being hard-subbed or burned-in), so if you speak English or understand Swedish, you don't have to watch with subtitles if you don't want to.

(When NRK showed 'The Bridge' which has Swedish and Danish dialogue (mirroring daily life where people don't speak each others' languages but understand them), the broadcast was entirely clean, and you could chose whether to have Norwegian subtitles or not. In Sweden and Denmark SVT and DR put hard burned in subtitles for the non-native language dialogue, and where conversations were mixed they also often subtitled their own language for consistency (it's quite confusing if you watch a scene with two characters talking but only one being subtitled)

From reading the Wikipedia entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_substitution) it sounds like Canadian networks just rebroadcast the US networks feed and put their own DOG and presumably adverts into the break rather than having a clean feed of the programming or playing out the episode themselves. Is that correct?

If someone tuned into the US network on a Canadian cable system during simsubbing, would they get a blank screen or just exactly the same sibsubbed broadcast showing on the Canadian channel?

They get the simmsubed broadcast - the same programme with a different DOG. (And yes my understanding is that for at least some programming - live entertainment shows - it’s a dirty feed with a full colour DOG covering the transparent one of the US channel).

The idea is really that the Canadian station gets the benefit of the advertising revenue rather the US one.

Just to add re the “bolt on” v “general”. In Ireland, the BBC and Channel 4 are always part of the basic pay TV package (Sky specifically categorises them as a “Bonus Pack” but there is nothing bonus about it, they are offered to every subscriber). Of course this differs from other countries because pay TV in Ireland was specifically established originally to carry the UK PSB channels as well as RTÉ, and specifically pay-TV channels (eir Sport and Premier Sports aside, nearly all of which originate in the UK) only came later.

Personally for me, one of the reasons why I prefer the 'domestic' version of a channel transmitted to neighbours is to see ads from the neighbouring country. Which is why seeing SkyNews international and not domestic won't cut it for me.

If Canadian broadcasters simsub the US broadcasts to redirect ad revenue, I don't see the point for the latter being offered on Canadian pay-TV systems. And do the US advertisers consider Canadian viewership when some of their products are not available on the northern side of the border? Point is I find advertisements coming from the broadcasters part of the 'whole package'.

...and Portugal, most of ex-Yugoslavia, and Estonia.

But you're making my point for me that dubbing is not a practice among Scandinavian languages. And all the more so that NRK offers a 'clean' viewing option (personally though since I like to learn Scandinavian language, I welcome subtitles, but that's a different conversation altogether) should DR and SVT worry that some viewers may choose NRK feed for whatever reason over them. I agree that in Sweden personal homes (e.g. Airbnbs and not hotels) do not offer national Danish, Finnish, or Norwegian channels.

But let's go to broader examples. Howabout the Netherlands and RoI where BBC programmes are offered on both national broadcasters and in original languages? In the case of the Netherlands, BBC One and Two are available on basic pay-TV (in fact available via Digitenne, the counterpart of what was once top-up TV). RTE and Virgin lineups surely have BBC programmes on offer when in fact BBC One and Two are available.

Channel 4 seems to be a special case as it is technically a different channel that replaces some programmes broadcast on the UK version due to rights restrictions.

No programmes are replaced these days, the option is there but it hasn’t been done in years (and when it was done it was a straight blackout, on Sky only, rather than offering an alternative programme. Cable was never affected). Different adverts of course, but it’s basically just a seventh advertising region alongside the longer established ones (I forget the acronym LMNSUS or such?)

Virgin broadcast very few BBC shows these days, Graham Norton would be one that comes to mind but they have that through their ITV connection ironically enough (as So Television is owned by ITV). RTÉ do broadcast a few but not nearly as many as they might have in the past, EastEnders being one, and so of the others they do take like Mrs Browns Boys and the Young Offenders they have had involvement with. Then there’s the odd case of Normal People, which RTÉ had zero involvement in commissioning or producing yet they promoted and marketed it to death as if owned it fully.

Here’s a question I have: why doesn’t Freesat just tighten their footprint even more to discourage satellite spillover into the RoI? I mean most of RoI has Saorsat?